- Title: Siobhan Davies Commissions
- Summary: Live performance, sound, and flicker books Deborah Saxon worked with fellow dancer Henry Montes and the artist Bruce Sharp to create a performance/installation that looks at the wedding of gesture and movement, and how the relationships between the two can decay. Inspired by stories of communities who have lost the objects and structures of their material existence, they consider the connection of the senses in the act of remembering, and how traces of the past can be disassembled and recreated.
- Work: LandMark
- Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
- Artist: Deborah Saxon, Henry Montes, Bruce Sharp
- Analysis: His hand was held suspended in front of his gaze, fingers hanging downward. His feet rooted, he made a quiet sound. Then with a sleight of hand he reached up to clasp his thumb, passing through a momentary handshake only to be dropped, revealing the other hand suspended. She enters and inhabits the space he has now left but carries with her traces of the moments before. She makes a soft sound.
His fingers suspended in front of his hand, gaze hung downward. His feet quiet, he made a rooted sound. Then with a slight reach to clasp his thumb, passing through a momentary shaking, only to be dropped, revealing the other’s hand suspended. She enters before and carries traces left of moments inhabited. She makes a sound soft.
In LandMark the artists interrogate relationships between the senses and how, through the act of remembering, new alliances and absurd misalignments can be bred. Reflection on the interrelationship between action, memory and place led to the idea of hanging flicker books in the space that the performers inhabited. The books punctuate the space as pockets of images that are in themselves traces of the imagination or ripples of thought that make manifest the artists’ consciousness in dialogue with the live performance.
- Production Date Original: 2011
- Venue: Bargehouse, London