- Title: Wild Translations
- Summary: Demonstrating physical opposition is part of the energy that went into the making of Wild Translations. The piece begins with a metal propeller being pulled away from the ground creating a space for the dancers to move in. The movements begin to travel through the dancers' bodies before going in a counter direction. The string quartet by Kevin Volans is interjected by sounds of voices and clanking metal. Dancers are drawn into working within a group or choosing to separate themselves out.
- Work: 1995
- Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
- Choreographer Comments: choreographed for Siobhan Davies Dance
- Dancer: Amanda Britton, Gill Clarke, Sean Feldman, John Kilroy, Paul Old, Catherine Quinn, Deborah Saxon
- Music: Kevin Volans
- Sound Score: Dancers on a Plane, 5th String Quartet (1993), by arrangement with Chester Music
- Musicians: Louisa Fuller (violin), Rick Koster (violin), Ivan McCready (cello), John Metcalfe (viola)
- Musicians Comments: Music performed by The Duke Quartet. Edinburgh flyer 1995 has music performed by Nossek Quartet.
- Designer: David Buckland
- Lighting Design: Peter Mumford
- Sound Engineer: Ron Thomson
- Costume Designer: Sasha Keir
- Costume Maker: Sasha Keir
- Analysis: ‘Danced beneath David Buckland's suspended horizontal rig - a large, woven metal structure which periodically rotates, rises, descends - Wild Translations reads like a collection of broken, incomplete journeys across the landscapes (external and internal) conjured up by Kevin Volans' score. Written for string quartet and incorporating found sounds - children playing, birdsong, laughter - culled from his native South Africa, Volans' music veers from instantaneous fury to slow, grinding mystery lightened with plucked notes.
Operating in perfect symbiosis, Volans' music and Davies' dance show how the physical features of particular places can trigger memory or imagination and how difficult - maybe even futile - it is to try and separate the two' (Sophie Constanti, The Independent, May 1995).
‘I consciously tried to go against the flow of movement. So while I might naturally build up something that flowed and had a sense of direction, in Wild Translations I actually went against it. If someone went to the right I wanted the neck to go to the left, if the arm went to the right and up, the rhythm had to go down. All the time we circumnavigated what we would normally do’ (Siobhan Davies, 1996). - Production Date Original: 1995
- Tour: with The Glass Blew In:
22/05/95 - 23/05/95 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
other dates TBA
with The Art of Touch:
06/10/95 - 07/10/95 - The Dancehouse, Manchester
09/10/95 - The Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch
12/10/95 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon
17/10/95 - Edinburgh Festival Theatre
20/10/95 - 21/10/95 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
25/10/95 - 26/10/95 - Sadler's Wells, London
