- Title: Endangered Species
- Summary: When Davies visited the Arctic with Cape Farewell her overwhelming impression was not so much of the landscape, but the vulnerable, almost incidental body she had brought into this uncompromising environment. In this work Davies focuses on the primal emotions the journey evoked - an image of a small semi-human figure, displayed in a museum vitrine, as if it were a branch of the human species that had either died out or was yet to evolve, or existed in some parallel world. The idea that we, like ice, are all one, and our existence is in peril. Davies worked in collaboration with Deborah May, Sam Collins, Jonathan Saunders and Sarah Warsop in making this piece.
- Work: 2007
- Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
- Choreographer Comments: An installation choreographed for and commissioned by Cape Farewell. An exhibition held at the Natural History Museum.
- Dancer: Sarah Warsop
- Designer: Sam Collins
- Costume Designer: Jonathan Saunders
- Editor: Deborah May
- Contributors: Sam Collins, Deborah May, Jonathan Saunders, Sarah Warsop
- Other TV/Film/Radio Credits: All additional video production credits - Deborah May
- Analysis: ‘Davies went on the third Cape Farewell voyage in March 2005. Accustomed through her profession to using her body expressively, she found expression in the sub-zero temperatures of the High Arctic severely limited in nature and range. Her attention centred on her bones, skin, breath; the fragility of her material body versus the effort and basic purpose behind her every movement.
The projection, Endangered Species, sees a small, semi-human figure dancing gracefully inside a museum display case, her movements exaggerated by a costume of long bending rods that increase in number as her dance progresses. While at first they liberate her by extending the boundaries of her body, the many rods eventually restrict and finally extinguish her small life form’ (Siobhan Davies Dance website). - Production Date Original: 2007
