Lock 4, The City of Akron
Lock 4 is an outdoor park in the heart of downtown Akron. As a significant public space in the city for concerts, festivals, and celebrations, it serves as the site for Dansbana!’s first North American public dance-floor installation. Highlighting the value of dance as a tool of personal and collective transformation, Dansbana!’s installation features custom architectural forms and sculptural Bluetooth speakers that can support live performances and improvised engagement.
Since 2015, this Swedish architectural collaborative has designed public, Bluetooth-powered, open-access dance floors through a community-driven research process. The name Dansbana! comes from a traditional Swedish term for a public dancing space. Initially developed by the all-female architecture trio as a response to a lack of public recreation spaces for young girls and women in and around Stockholm, each Dansbana! dance floor—including both permanent and temporary sites in Stockholm and Istanbul—is conceived together with local participants and site-responsive in its approach.
The Akron dance floor’s program and design has been developed through a series of workshops in Fall/Winter 2021–22 with dancers from area community and cultural organizations. The goal was to create an ongoing dialogue around movement, recreation, and music—an architecture of joy and collective healing with effects that can resonate beyond the Triennial.
With support from the Knight Arts Challenge.
FRONT exhibitions in Akron are presented by Richard and Alita Rogers, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, GAR Foundation, and the Akron Community Foundation.
