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What a little
bird told her -
The Glasgow Herald.
WHATEVER responses the call of the Australian Pied Butcher Bird inspires on his native patch, it's probably never been credited with inspiring a contemporary dance work. But ask the award-winning choreographer Siobhan Davies what lies at the heart of her latest company piece, and she'll not only say, she'll whistle, the song of the Pied Butcher. A short phrase of clear notes - ''that's sort of it'', she laughs, and it's tempting to suggest she uses her own lightly skipping laughter as part of the sound for whatever she does next.
Andrew Pink, who has created the soundscore for Bird Song could doubtless spin and tweak an orchestra of irresistible glee out of Davies's own chuckles.
As it is, he's spent months sourcing, adjusting, composing layers of sound. ''And silence,'' he tells me. ''Silence became part of the selection process and part of the work I was doing as well.''
Now a statement like that can cause the hairs on an audience's neck to prickle with alarm - indeed, as the celebrated American dance-maker Paul Taylor discovered, in the 50s, silence is anything but golden when onlookers expect clues, or consolation, from the music. Push the issue of silence back to Davies - who for years was known for using wonderful contemporary compositions by the likes of Kevin Volans and Gavin Bryars - and she'll agree that music can act like a signpost, or a bridge. But, in the same way as she's now moving away from presenting work in conventional proscenium arch venues, she's also moving away from ''set'' scores.
That's not to say she's abandoned music altogether. Just that, with Pink's help, she's arriving at a more carefully personalised mix that, for Bird Song, includes a Bach canon, some piano music by Walter Zimmerman and an intriguing ''re-composition'' of a Schumann piece. She explains the thinking behind the shift. ''Well, if you're not careful, you use musical sound as a prop. Something to fill up the space. And influence the mood of the space which the dancers then enter into. And I was questioning my own use of that. Questioning what listening and hearing are. Wondering what sound does to the dancer, and therefore what it does to the audience. Then trying to find pieces of music - or sound - that would make our ears think again.''
It so happened that Pink was heading off to America for a short break. Having worked with installation artist Max Eastley on the soundscape for Davies's last project, Plants and Ghosts, he knew already that the lady loves trays of fresh CDs. He volunteered to do some hunter-gathering while over there - ''America is such a wonderful source of strange CDs. Things you don't find in our shops,'' sighs Davies, who also took to surfing the net in search of unknown magic.
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However, when Pink returned bearing all manner of booty, from classical to techno via sound-effects compilations, one particular song crept in at Davies's ear and took hold of her imagination. And that was the call of the Australian Pied Butcher Bird.
''He sings a few notes in different orders -which is incredibly beautiful and incredibly formal.'' Davies pauses, adds the kind of afterthought which hints at how she doesn't like simplistic generalisations or half-truths. ''Formal from a human point of view, not necessarily from a bird point of view, of course. From a bird point of view, he's marking out territory and space, and he's in 'display' with his song.'' Replace ''bird'' with ''dancer'' and you can see how her thoughts began to turn, on the strength of the sound and what could be associated with it. ''She absolutely loved the recording,'' says Pink. ''It really did become the starting point - it even provided the name of the piece, Bird Song. But then it became a question of 'what next?' and that led us on to thinking about how, why, the bird sings. The Pied Butcher Bird is producing music unconsciously. It's not aware that it's 'music'. And so this idea of
'unconscious music' became a theme, another starting point. I started to investigate sounds that could be thought of in that way, gradually put
sequences together - used technology to manipulate some of them in the studio, then built up these layers into a collage.''
Meanwhile, back in her studio, Davies was already in the middle of the new work. Well, actually, she was just beginning. She knew she wanted to have the Pied Butcher's song at the heart of the piece, so that's where she started. She played the phrases over and over to dancer Henry Montes, then let him think through his own movements and responses. ''And actually, Henry did look at the whole expanse of lung and ribcage that you'd need in order to send out this incredible sound. And now he does move his chest and ribcage in a way that he certainly hasn't before - but he doesn't look a bit like a bird.'' Because, no, this is definitely not Davies turning Disney.
As she describes the washes of light and projected imagery that create different textures on the floor, the silences that flank that central calling of bird song - ''the dancers are actually improvising to rhythms and pieces of music they know, as individuals, but the audience doesn't hear any of that!'' - and the restless mindset that is pushing her away from the comfort zone of her own celebrity, you realise that Davies, now in her fifties, is taking risks that would unnerve dancemakers half her age. ''Not everything is what it seems,'' she laughs. ''The Pied Butcher Bird turned out nothing like as beautiful as his song - quite a bastard, in fact. He totally lives up to his name, rather like the Sweeney Todd of birds.'' Mary Brennan, April 2004.
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