“I am an artist, I choreograph, I collaborate closely with dance and other artists. I enjoy the engagement our work has with an audience. As a maker in the studio, I crash about, building, dismantling and trying to find my relationship with movement.” Siobhan Davies
A Choreographic Career
Siobhan Davies believes in dance. She believes that it is an art in its own right, one that is every bit as articulate, expressive and productive as music, or drama, or visual art. She believes that dance can be as intellectual as it is sensual, that it can be both technical and emotional, metaphorical as well as immediate.
That conviction is the one constant in a career that has been as varied as it has been long and lauded. It began in 1967: Davies, an art student, discovered a new world when she began to take classes with Contemporary Dance Group, founded the same year and soon to become London Contemporary Dance Theatre. By 1969 she was already performing with the company; by 1972 she was choreographing for them. In 1974 she was appointed Associate Choreographer; in 1983, 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 1981. The following year, she joined forces with Richard Alston and Ian Spink to form Second Stride, one of the most influential independent dance companies of the 1980s.
From the beginning, Davies sought to explore and to exploit the possibilities of her medium, dance itself. Her work was less theatrical than most of LCDT’s pieces, less musical than Alston’s, less narrative than Spink’s. Her main early influence was American abstractionist Merce Cunningham, but she really began to forge her own path in Sphinx (1977). Here she began from a “blank slate”, consciously stopping herself from thinking of style, technique or meanings; her resulting solo seemed to emerge organically from inside her own body. Another landmark was Plain Song (1981), in which she sought to build and sustain an intricate composition from its own dance phrases.
In 1987, Davies once again needed to wipe the slate. She left LCDT, left Second Stride, and left the country, taking a year’s sabbatical in America on a Fulbright Arts Fellowship. On her return, she joined Rambert Dance Company as Associate Choreographer (until 1992) and founded the Siobhan Davies Dance Company. Her first works in 1988 displayed a renewed vitality: the liquid energies of White Man Sleeps (SDDC) and Embarque (Rambert) showed a new-found freedom, while Wyoming (SDDC) explored scale and setting, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds.
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, and 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.
But by 2000 Davies was again looking to shift the ground beneath her feet, and she channelled her energies in two new directions. First, she turned away from the established theatre circuit: pieces such as Plants and Ghosts and Bird Song were made for non-proscenium spaces – studios, galleries, even an aircraft hangar. This gave new artistic challenges too: presenting work to be seen from different angles, or with moving rather than seated audiences. Especially in the smaller studio settings, Davies now concentrated on using rigorous compositional devices to give shape to “plain” movement – the choreographic equivalent of making poems with complex forms and simple words. And with The Collection she became both part choreographer, part curator, presenting dance as one “exhibit” within a visual arts setting.
Davies’s other energies went towards fighting to establish a permanent home for her company – a goal she finally achieved in 2006 when she opened the RIBA award-winning Siobhan Davies Studios in south London. More than just a base for her company, the building represents Davies’ vision of dance – as a discipline, as a performing art, and as a wellspring for ideas and creativity. Just as Davies has always worked collaboratively with composers, designers and dancers in the belief that this enriches dance more than she could on her own, so her new studios also house other arts organisations, and Davies has programmed interdisciplinary seminars, extended her creative and participatory projects, and hosted exhibitions. Siobhan Davies Studios remains true to Davies’ founding belief in dance itself: here, she places her work as a vital force within the larger field of dance, and dance as a vital force within the larger fields of arts and culture.
Talks and appearances
Siobhan Davies regularly gives talks and appears at events to discuss her work.
Recent events:
Siobhan Davies talks at the ICA
Thursday 15 December, 6:30pm
Siobhan Davies talked at the ICA as part of their Bloomberg New Contemporaries 201: In the Presence series. This series sees talks by curators, artists, critics and other cultural practitioners on a tour through Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence. Inspired by the work in the exhibition, each tour offers a unique perspective on emergent art practice and the state of cultural production in the UK today.
Siobhan Davies in Conversation with Joe Moran, Efrosini Protapapa and Christopher House
Friday 2 December, 4.30 – 6pm
Venue: Toynbee Studios, London
Price: £5
To book, please call 020 7650 2350
Following a performance lecture by Joe Moran, the four dance artists discussed critical strategies for new choreographic thinking within and beyond dance.
Click for more information
Siobhan Davies in conversation with Mathieu Copeland
Re-envisaging the word ‘curator’ from a choreographic point of view
Tuesday 8 November, 7pm
Venue: Siobhan Davies Studios
Stemming from conversations between Siobhan and Mathieu, the discussion explored the proximity between choreography and curating, and how curating an exhibition somehow shares the same materiality as choreography: time, and orchestration of time.
This talk formed part of Independent Dance's Crossing Borders series of conversations with artists whose particular practice has led them beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries.
Click here for more information
Siobhan Davies talk at Slade
Wednesday 26 October, 5-7pm
Venue: Slade School of Fine Art
Siobhan Davies talked about her upcoming work, Siobhan Davies Commissions, to students and staff at Slade.
Listen to the talk online here
Marcus Coates talk at Tate Britain
Saturday 22 October, 3 - 4pm
Venue: Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain
Artist Marcus Coates talked about his work. He is known for works where he films himself entering a trance like state that he calls ‘becoming animal’, and attempts to solve people’s problems by seeking answers from the animal spirits that he encounters.
Click here for more information
Siobhan Davies in conversation with Mark Rowan-Hull and Michael Stanley
Friday 21 October, 6pm
Venue: Wolfson College, Oxford
Siobhan Davies talked about Siobhan Davies Commissions and other work with artist Mark Rowan-Hull (Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford) and Michael Stanley (Director, Modern Art Oxford).
Watch the talk online here
