Title: Dance Work
Work: Bird Song
Summary
Davies began rehearsals with the dancers listening to phrases from the songs of birds. Later, short pieces of music were introduced into the rehearsal process. The rhythms and textures of these became embedded into the dancers' bodies, creating a clear physical language. By the time the music that would be heard during the performance was introduced the dancers had developed a more embodied rhythmic response. The overarching structure of the piece sees clusters of sound, light and motion spiralling in towards a pivotal solo (the song of the Australian Pied Butcher), then spinning out again towards the far edge; like a galaxy with the song of the bird as its gravitational centre. The dance was initially performed 'in the round' with the audience seated on four sides, and was later reworked for presentation in proscenium arch venues.
Analysis
As part of the process of compiling this archive Coventry University and Siobhan Davies Dance have researched and prototyped new presentations of the digital objects for two works, Bird Song and In Plain Clothes. These presentations, or Kitchens, bring together objects or 'ingredients' organised according to their role in the making or the 'cooking' of a work. As an object in itself, the Kitchen lays out the digital resources in an alternative way. Click here to access the Kitchen.
‘Ear and eye situate us in space and space is experienced by the body – focused by light, located by sound and understood through relationships with others. This is the very heart of dance. And performed in the round, as this work is, the audience are physically around the dance, looking to movement, looking to light and looking to sound’ (David Ward, programme note, 2004).
‘Siobhan Davies…is a poet of small things, whose exploration and distillation of detail is magnified by the power she focuses on them. Bird Song, made earlier this year, is a maniacally unorthodox experience, a ravishing fusion of dance, light and sound that takes place in the centre of the audience. It is a spiral of dance, light and sound rushing in towards, and then being thrown away from, the weirdly beautiful call of an Australian wild bird’ (Ismene Brown, The Daily Telegraph, 12 October 2004).
‘The dancers start to become aware of wider horizons, and of each other: arms that were raised as barriers make tentative contacts, and snatches of piano music mould their bodies into graceful, more coordinated ease’ (Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, 23 October 2004).
'With the audience seated on four sides, the focus was brought inwards, reinforcing a sense of circularity. Audience members were able to see other audience members as much as dancers, providing new choices in what to view. The removal of the proscenium arch abandoned the ‘them and us’ relationship between performer and audience. But one of the more striking aspects of Bird Song is the interweaving of meticulously composed movement with an emotionally charged sound score by Andy Pink and Adrian Plaut’s lighting design, which together create diverse and vibrant mood states. Bird Song travels through movement clusters that seem to drive towards and emanate out of a central solo....and dwells on capturing the present in the synthesis of intricate yet legible dance, sound and lighting' (Sarah Whatley, 2005).
‘Initiated by isolated joints, movement has an anatomical focus and draws attention to body parts and surfaces’ (Lorna Sanders, Dancing Times, November 2006).
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