A Dream Realised and Talent Happily Housed
Clement Crisp, 5th May 2006
The British choreographer Siobhan Davies is in her own, purpose-built studios. Her dream has been realised after more than a decade, and also my best hopes (and those of many other dance-lovers) that this rare and questioning talent would have a workplace worthy of her gifts, one that would reflect the elegance and refinement of her art. There she is at last, installed in a converted school, miraculously rethought by Sarah Wigglesworth as a home for dance. Edwin Heathcote has written in these pages on the merits of the building. It remains for me to say that the performance area, the studio on the top floor, is a ravishing domain, matching in some marvellous way the spirit of Davies’ work: its lightness and strength and its subtle spatial relationships in the exqusite arcs of the ceiling, in the way light comes into the space, and in the harmonies of its layout.
It is a platitude the size of a city to say dance is about space – how the placing of moving bodies can make or break choreography and performance. Space has been a constant and constantly significant matter in Davies’ creativity from the very first. Her earliest creations from the 1970s – The Calm, Pilot – had the most delicate feeling for how her performers were located on stage. All her work since then has been concerned with opening out movement, with trajectories of dance-ideas, both seen and implied, and with how choreography may “approach” its public. Davies’ use of non-dance spaces for dance – latterly an aircraft hangar, an art gallery, even the recent adaptation of the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, west London – has shown how penetrating are her skills in making movement and in bringing it to us as audience. In this new and subtle space she can dare, and dare again. With In Plain Clothes, which inaugurates the studios, she has, indeed, dared.
The piece comes with extra, fascinating luggage. At some performances distinguished speakers (unconnected professionally with dance) will discuss their work and their perceptions, as they impinge on movement. On Wednesday night Francis Wells, a heart surgeon, spoke illuminatingly, with special reference to those transcendent moments when an artist, a racing-driver, a surgeon, an astronaut, a dancer or a sportsman may achieve a state of almost ecstatic command of his or her skill.
In Plain Clothes showed Davies at her most questioning and assured. Eight dancers clad in Sandra Bamminger’s simple tops and ruched and gathered trousers repeatedly swept in line down the studio like the tide coming in on a beach, and like the tide, leaving behind fragments of experience, action and emotion. There is a simple accompaniment by Matteo Fargion of memories of Italian folk melody and text. The dance perhaps responds, or perhaps makes its own decisions. The effect seems austere, then revelatory, succinct in its hints or physical signals. It is at all times communicative, speaking to us in a way that helps us understand, like a haiku, a riddle we finally solve. I thought it very fine.
“Dear Sue Davies: I have watched and admired your work from the very first. Now, here you are in a ravishing place that is tribute to your gifts, to your beautiful dances, and to your grace of spirit. You have my vast gratitude and my vast affection.” Clement Crisp
