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Wheeling and swooping - The Daily Telegraph
This year's Dance Umbrella twirls gracefully on with a brief run at Sadler's Wells of a duo of works by the terrific Siobhan Davies. She and her modern Dance Company are poised to move from their Battersea home to a state-of-the-art base near Elephant and Castle. And, given that White Man Sleeps was the first piece she composed when she formed the troupe in 1988, and Bird Song premiered only last year, this makes the two pieces a neat frame for the company's first 17 years. Where White Man Sleeps flows effortlessly, both from start to finish and to and fro across the stage, Bird Song moves very much more jaggedly. This time, Davies drew her inspiration from the lilting call of the Australian pied butcher bird, and the entire piece seems to corkscrew up to a figurative solo in which a single dancer elegantly becomes a lone winged creature, to a chorus of actual bird song (Cunningham's Beach Birds comes inevitably to mind).
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Both before and after this, however, things are less straightforward. Stunningly lit by Adrian Plaut, the piece begins with the eight dancers flocking together on one side of the stage, beating and shaking their limbs, then dashing in mild panic to an opposite corner.
And, just as Andy Pink's effective synthesized score seems to have taken the bird's call as its starting point, so Davies's vibrant choreography seems to evolve as a dark fantasy on a loosely ornithological theme.
It's all rather baffling, and a little frustrating, with Davies constantly leading you up blind alleys of "meaning" - and also perhaps a little long. But as an exercise in son, lumiere and superior movement quality, it's also something close to mesmerising. Mark Monahan, September 2005.
next review...
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