White Bird Featherless
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  • Title: White Bird Featherless
  • 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.
  • Work: Film (1995)
  • Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
  • Choreographer Comments: choreographed for Siobhan Davies and Dancers
  • Music: Gerald Barry
  • Sound Score: By arrangement with Oxford University Press. Text for WATER PARTED by Vincent Deane. 'The score for this work consists of three separate pieces, TRIORCHIC BLUES, (piano), FIVE CHORALES (two pianos), and WATER PARTED, (counter-tenor/mezzo soprano and piano). The latter two pieces come from Barry's opera, THE INTELLIGENCE PARK. The structure, pace and vigour of these three scores have provided the framework for Davies' choroeography. The two pianos, combined with the unearthly qualities of the counter-tenor/mezzo soprano, pull the piece into a suspended space-unrecognizable and without ground' (programme note, 1992).
  • Musicians: Julian Jacobson (piano), Andrew Ball (piano), Nicholas Clapton (countertenor)
  • Musicians Comments: Each performance requires two pianos and a countertenor/mezzo-soprano
  • Lighting Design: Peter Mumford
  • Costume Designer: Antony McDonald
  • Costume Maker: Sasha Keir
  • Film Director: Peter Mumford
  • Film Director Comments: Produced and Directed by Peter Mumford.
  • Other TV/Film/Radio Credits Comments: A Dancelines production for the BBC's series Summer Dance, broadcast 12/08/1995.
  • 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).
  • Production Date Original: 1992
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