Siobhan Davies

Siobhan Davies is a renowned British choreographer who rose to prominence in the 1970s. Davies was a founding member of London Contemporary Dance Theatre and in 1982 joined forces with Richard Alston and Ian Spink to create independent dance company Second Stride. Establishing Siobhan Davies Dance in 1988, she consistently works closely with collaborating dance artists to ensure that their own artistic enquiry is part of the creative process. in 2006 she opened the lottery funded and RIBA award winning Siobhan Davies Studios, a dance hub for classes, rehearsals and artistic support. 

By 2002 Davies moved away from the traditional theatre circuit and started making work for gallery spaces and other sites. Her artistic practice involves bringing together a collective of artists and choreographers to create within an environment that supports them to share common investigative concerns alongside their own work.

Davies applies choreography across a wide range of creative disciplines including visual arts, craft and film. In 2012 Davies created her first film work All This Can Happen with director David Hinton which has toured globally over 21 countries. In 2015 they worked together for a second time to create film installation work The Running Tongue. A third film Transparent 2023 was made by Davies in collaboration with David Hinton and Hugo Glendinning which opened at The London Film Festival.

Recent choreographic works such as To hand (2011), Manual (2013) and Table of Contents (2014) have been presented at some of the most prestigious art institutions in the UK and Europe, including the ICA and Whitechapel Gallery (London), Victoria Miro Gallery (London), Turner Contemporary (Margate), Tramway (Glasgow) and Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. In 2021 Davies stepped down from being the Director of her Studios, but remains active with projects and occasional performing. 

Choreography; Presenting or performing dance in museum and gallery spaces; Interdisciplinary practice and collaborating across art forms; Work with dance and choreographic artists to expand the reach of their work.

I continue to find dance and choreography truly fascinating as performative arts. I am conscious that very little is known about how work is made – how a community of artists and others create together, whether in individual works, or across works made over a period of time; whether we look at one artist or a generation. Understanding the evolution of dance practices and their connectivity could lead to an enriched understanding of the qualities these arts have distinctively developed and how they connect to disciplines outside the areas in which they are perceived to have value. At present i am using my dance and choreographic practices to make films which has encouraged me to re look at the Coventry digital archive. I am researching  how better to structure an archive so that it can be used as a truer account of how dance is made and  communicate that easily, wisely and lightly to a wider field.