UK based Siobhan Davies Dance was founded in 1988 by pioneering choreographer Siobhan Davies CBE. Under her auspices Siobhan Davies Dance evolved from being a national and international touring dance company into Siobhan Davies Studios: an investigative contemporary art organisation, widely regarded as the UK leader of investigative and interdisciplinary work in dance and choreography. The organisation is especially respected for evolving relationships between dance and visual arts through the UK and internationally.
While she will continue to work artistically, Siobhan Davies will step down as Artistic Director of SDS. Among other projects for 2020 and 2021, she is producing a film with long time collaborator David Hinton to celebrate her seventieth birthday and the seventy works she has made so far. Based on her Transparencies practice, this film looks at a collection of images significant to her thinking and doing throughout her career. The premiere is planned for 2021.
In the current political and economic context of increasing challenge and rapid change a clear approach is essential. Siobhan Davies Studios believes that the resources of choreography are invaluable in navigating this moment. Siobhan Davies Studios is rooted in a community of creators and audiences who experiment and collaborate to investigate and create: in order to meet the demands of their community both now and in the future, Siobhan Davies Studios is currently working to reimagine the way in which they work in order to give artists the freedom and autonomy that they need. Most specifically Siobhan Davies Studios is considering a shift in their producing and programming processes to allow for a more flexible approach.
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Emma Gladstone, Chair of the Board Siobhan Davies Studios said:
“Siobhan Davies has decided to shift her creative focus and concentrate on her own independent practice, after leading Siobhan Davies Dance and Siobhan Davies Studios for forty years. For myself and my fellow Trustees this is inevitably bitter-sweet news, though typical of Sue’s brave and pioneering approach to life.”
Siobhan Davies said:
“I feel very positive about this moment: change is exciting and necessary. I have been so lucky to witness the emergence of a new kind of dancing and making from a seam of independent artists. Although I know many of them, I also know they are accompanied by others whom I don’t know and all are working in ways I could not have thought about when I began in the late 60’s. The expansion of what dancers, choreographers, writers and curators are researching, thinking and performing about today are exhilarating to me. SDS is calling for a new leadership and a re-imagining of how to be creatively at work while recognising the complexity of challenging futures. I will be admiringly curious about what a new leadership can open up to artists and the relationships they wish to make within and beyond the studios.”
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Download: Press Release