Locating rhythms : improvised play in the built environment

Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis (2004) articulates space as an embodied experience of rhythms. His theory asserts the importance of the instant of ‘lived’ practice (Lefebvre, 1991). Following a practice-as-research methodology, this chapter explores findings from a series of performances that have taken place in the UK built environment. This practice of free, improvised play is understood as a critique of dominant and normative rhythms in this setting. This chapter asserts the bodily capacity to sense and respond to rhythm from external entities within close spatial proximity, and is a development of knowledge produced through the act of playing.