Title: Dance Work
Work: White Bird Featherless

• Date: 1992
• Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
• Music: Gerald Barry
• Garments: Antony McDonald
• Lighting: Peter Mumford
• Film Director: Peter Mumford
• Dance Artists: Amanda Britton , Gill Clarke , Paul Douglas , Sean Feldman , Jeremy James , Elizabeth Old , Deborah Saxon , Sean Curham
• Musicians: Andrew Ball (piano) , Nicholas Clapton (countertenor) , Catherine Edwards (piano) , Julian Jacobson (piano) , Shelagh Sutherland (piano) , Buddug Verona James (mezzo-soprano)

Summary

Choreographed the same year as Make-Make, White Bird Featherless has a similarly enigmatic quality. The 18th century riddle is played out in the dance through complex games and courtship rituals. Fruit is exchanged between the dancers and disappears then reappears, a reference to the 18th century courtship ritual of giving fruit as a symbol of sexual favours. Just as pieces of fruit change hands, phrases of movement are exchanged among the dancers. The dancers need to find or keep a place both on the chequered floor but also within the complex music. Their actions are limited or propelled by the squares of light and the gathering speed of the jostling pianos. The chessboard on the floor is a theme continued in the white costumes, which are set against a black background. The score consists of three separate pieces by Gerald Barry, all for piano, the third featuring the countertenor, Nicholas Clapton. The work was performed live as well as filmed for the BBC.

Analysis

White bird featherless
Flew from paradise
Pitched on the castle wall
Along came Lord Landless
Took it up handless
And rode away horseless
To the King's white hall.
-18th century riddle (Programme note, 1992)

'The dancers are dressed in uniform white - hints of the 18th century in their quilted bodices and billowing sleeves. They move across a chequerboard of lighted squares, and brief suggestions of a fencing stance or graceful sexual encounter give substance to the work's evocation of a playful, dangerous and very knowing aristocratic world' (Judith Mackrell, The Independent, 18 October 1992).

'Set to Gerald Barry's tense, purposeful music with its teasing undertones of erotic fantasy, Davies' dance evokes a playful, dangerous and very knowing aristocratic world. The work is distinguished by Peter Mumford's ingenious light installation - a complex chequerboard of lighted squares - and Davies' audaciously fluid and rangy movement, performed with a rare sense of celebration by its cast of six' (source unknown).

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