Dance & Film: Juxtapositions

Transparent
dir-scr Siobhan Davies
in collaboration with David Hinton, Hugo Glendinning
with Siobhan Davies, Andrea Buckley, Lindsey Butcher, Charlie Morrissey, Annie Pui Ling Lok, Paul Douglas, Linda Gibbs, Jeremy James, Lucy Suggate, Marina Collard, Matthias Sperling, Laurent Cavanna
prd Pinky Ghundale
22/UK 35m 
Lillian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells, London • 20.Apr.23

In this biographical film, Siobhan Davies examines her life over the past 50 years as a dancer, choreographer and artist. Her approach is insightful and observant, so rather than tracing details, she explores thoughts and feelings. What emerges is a revelatory look at the experience of a dancer that will resonate for anyone who has ever considered what it means to be human.

The film unfolds in three chapters. Animal Origins uses still images to consider raw physicality, especially where Davies sees similarities between herself and other creatures. A Lived In Circle brings movement into the picture, as four dancers walk in concentric rings that echo throughout nature and art. And Transparency reflects the way Davies prefers to work using acetate and tissue paper, so she can overlay images with each other to find commonality, which helps her further understand her own connection with people, places and history.

"Dance involves movement and constant change," Davies says, "and the see-through nature of my note-taking helped me to experience ideas and images as less fixed in time or place but rather on the way to becoming something else or emerging out of what came before."

The film is a kaleidoscopic collection of images intriguingly juxtaposed with each other. It features artwork, antiquities, sketches and photographs, including a series of striking pictures of the young Davies in a dance studio. She also appears in new video sequences as she discusses how all of this has fed into her career as a dancer and choreographer. And the ideas lead to observations about her young granddaughter's pure relationship with her body, a feeling Davies only recalls experiencing once as an adult.

Davies is encouraging the viewer to explore what it means to move, to be part of the world and to create shapes and possibilities with our bodies every day. It's a mesmerising collision of images, words, music and sound. And it leaves us looking at our own movements through a new perspective.

For details, visit TRANSPARENT FILM >

photos by Siobhan Davies Studios • 20.Apr.23

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