TRANSPARENT FILM – SIOBHAN DAVIES

“Transparent, you discover, becomes a web of images, words, sounds and ideas,
shimmering with synaptic connections that form and fade like memory itself.”

Sanjoy Roy, dance writer, The Guardian

We are hugely excited that Siobhan Davies will be at Wainsgate for this screening of her wonderful film TRANSPARENT. As well as showing the film, Siobhan will present aspects of her working process, and Charlie Morrissey will show a new work for which ALONGSIDE is its working title.

TRANSPARENT is a gentle manifesto and a visionary work of art itself. At the heart of the film are the reflections of dancer and choreographer Siobhan Davies as she unravels the complex processes that underpin a life’s work in dance. At the same time she looks far beyond herself, touching upon the histories of movement embedded in each of us, allowing the watcher to enter a descriptive world and feel the weight of their own body – walking or turning or falling.

The images in the film echo Davies’ thoughts, showing the physical fluidity and depth of movement between all things. Many of these things are from the art world – from ancient sculpture through modern artworks and personal photos. The art is seen to be both felt and material, then transformed by the dancer into something they can hold and use.

“The film is called Transparent because for several years I used both tracing paper and acetate to write down notes and collect imagery. Dance involves movement and constant change 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.” Siobhan Davies

For Davies each interaction with a work of art is a collaboration, every cultural experience an opportunity to absorb, internalise and re-use the most precious thoughts and feelings of others.

Her work with David Hinton and Hugo Glendinning is no different, turning the filming process into a choreography, intertwining three very different makers’ visions to construct a rich screen work that shape shifts between biography, lecture, exhibition, psychological study and scientific experiment. Transparent is a lucid and optimistic work, on the surface there is a delicate sense
of an autobiographical narrative, but this narrative can be seen through to reveal an unfixable archive of movement and experience.

“I can dance something yesterday and I can only dance it today in the knowledge of the experience I’ve had between yesterday and today. I am a body. I don’t have one. The word ‘body’ just isn’t enough. It doesn’t encompass the all of us.” Siobhan Davies

SUPERNATURE - LIVE PERFORMANCE - CHARLIE MORRISSEY

As part of the evening, Charlie Morrissey is developing a live performance in response to or alongside the film.

It plays with physical experiences of being with, of posession and haunting in a world in which a body exists always in relation to.

The performance situation is treated as a site of supernature – a queer space of collective attention and suspension.

The piece calls on past performance collaborations with Siobhan Davies, some of which are woven into her film.