Sight Scene: Dancing About Architecture

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YOU KNOW THE SAYING: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Does that hold when dancing about architecture has a soundtrack — the beep-beep-beep of a truck in reverse?

Pairing bulldozers with ballerinas is Pas de Dirt, an industrial dance program put on by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in coordination with Bowen McCauly Dance. There is, of course, a pas de deux that's natural to construction site: Humans lead backhoes and excavators in carefully choreographed moves. (One can catch a screening of a typical performance almost anywhere in the District — in fact, one at 14th and W Streets NW regularly wakes this writer in the morning.)

To see construction for art's sake, however, you'll have to go to the National Building Museum, which is devoted to the issues and history of architecture, urban design and construction.

Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra have been staging a variety of site-specific performances and temporary installations through Street Scenes D.C., a nonprofit organization. This might be the first time that the D.C. art world has ever had to reach out to Monarc Construction for mixed-media materials.

» National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW, Sun., 2 p.m., 3 p.m, 4 p.m., free (Judiciary Square)

Photo courtesy Pas de Dirt