In she was appointed Associate Choreographer; in , Resident Choreographer. Alongside her work with LCDT, Davies also worked more experimentally in the independent sector, first as a dancer with Richard Alston and Dancers, then as artistic director of Siobhan Davies and Dancers, which she founded in The following year, she joined forces with Richard Alston and Ian Spink to form Second Stride, one of the most influential independent companies of the s.
From the beginning, Davies sought to explore and to exploit the possibilities of her medium, dance itself. Her main early influence was American abstractionist Merce Cunningham, but she really began to forge her own path in Sphinx Another landmark was Plain Song , in which she sought to build and sustain an intricate composition from its own dance phrases.
In , Davies once again needed to wipe the slate. For the next decade, Davies forged ahead. In Bank she discovered rhythmic variety, in Wild Translations she deliberately fractured any sense of confluence or unity.
In Wanting to Tell Stories she created an emotive drama entirely through movement and framing, and in Different Trains and Make-Make she honed the expressiveness of gestures and small details. During this time she garnered a string of awards, had several pieces televised, received commissions from English National Ballet and The Royal Ballet to make works for the opera-house stage, and from Artangel for the Atlantis Gallery in east London.
Get started. Log in Join New video Upload. Create a video. Go live. But throughout, the piece is both shaped by and tailored to its particular performers, so that they become the embodiment of, rather than a vehicle for the choreography. Creating Bird Song In making Bird Song Davies chose a different way of working with sound and with structure from her previous piece, Plants and Ghosts In that piece, the dancers had improvised in silence.
The score was composed specifically for the choreography, but music and movement were only put together at a later stage of rehearsal. Mariusz Raczynski patters about in jazzy routines, Pari Naderi holds very still, Laurent Cavanna carves decisive shapes. They've all contributed their special qualities, but the whole doesn't seem greater than the parts.
White Man Sleeps, at half the length, weaves its way as coherently as the African rug that defines the dancing ground. Like the mat's patterns, the choreography repeats motifs, keeps its thread running through strips of movement until the piece is complete. Kevin Volans's score drives the dancers, its brusqueness in contrast to their softer, sensual manoeuvres. I found the instruments - harpsichords, percussion and viola da gamba - overamplified, obliterating Volans's subtler sounds and making a fine cast appear subdued.
Davies is soon to have a permanent base for her company, with a rehearsal studio large enough to show her work before taking it on tour.
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