It's the first day of construction on the site of what will eventually be the Siobhan Davies Dance Centre, and a nonchalant band of workmen has just begun clearing away rubble and tearing down old partition walls. It took Davies almost a decade to find a suitable venue for her grand projet and she has finally settled on a red-brick Victorian school just south of Elephant and Castle in south London called the Charlotte Sharman School Annexe. At the moment, the building is creaking under the weight of decades of neglect: the ceilings and floors of many rooms are sagging, and the cracked paintwork in the stairwell is flapping. But soon, Davies promises, this will be one of the most high-tech, state-of-the-art dance centres in the country: "The first floors will preserve the original Victorian architecture and as it rises it becomes more and more contemporary," she says, deftly negotiating the treacherous floorboards. "Then, finally, the modern part will rise like a volcano out of the top. The guiding energy behind it all was, of course, finding a place for my company to work in but also to try to create a building that, in absolutely every respect, will be a beacon for independent dance."
It could be argued that Davies herself, even without a base, has been fulfilling this guiding function in the world of British dance for the past 30 years. At the London Contemporary Dance Theatre in the 70s, she distinguished herself as one of the most accomplished modern dancers. Ian Spink, who worked with Davies both at the LCDT and in their own company Second Stride, recalls: "She is quite tall. But she somehow had the ability to find these moments of absolute stillness. She could also slide and melt in a very liquid way - this beautiful kind of flowing quality. There was something of an animal in the way she moved."
At the LCDT, she soon graduated to the role of choreographer, and went on to found Siobhan Davies and Dancers in 1980. This group, later christened the Siobhan Davies Dance Company, propelled Davies to the forefront of British dance with totemic works such as Wyoming (1988), a shimmering, barren re-imagining of the American midwest; the exuberantly minimalist Different Trains in 1990; and the relentlessly energetic The Art of Touch in 1995, which earned her an Olivier award. Despite the distinctiveness of her own movement palette, Davies has always avoided the approach favoured by some choreographers of simply demonstrating movements. Instead, through a series of investigations and inquiries, she lets the dancers build up the work themselves: "You need to surprise your brain in order to make the body work differently," she says of the precepts underlying her work. "Then you have to find ideas that will disturb your natural sense of geography. In a piece called Bank I started to employ patterns - from calligraphy or embroidery or paintings or whatever - and to allow those patterns to disturb the body. All of these things gradually give me a larger vocabulary, which allows me to present the human being as a body, living, at work, curious, interested, emotional."
The result is a style that incorporates many of the radical innovations of modernists such as Merce Cunningham and Balanchine but which maintains a steadfast, somewhat traditional sense of grace and musical fluidity as well as, in what has become a Davies trademark, a fastidious approach to ensemble work: "There are very few figures in modern dance who have managed to mature and evolve," says fellow choreographer Richard Alston. "In America you have Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. And in this country there are even fewer, and she is right up there with them. She has managed to build up a startling body of work, toiling away seriously and quietly. The movement in her work is always very, very human. She deals with strange little knots of people, getting into huddles and uncurling and flowing and rolling. I don't think of her work as in any way abstract. There is always this huge sense of compassion in it."
Davies lives in Camden with her partner David Buckland and their two children in a converted shop, fronted by a large window. The bustle outside seems in constant danger of breaking in, and often does. Almost immediately after my arrival, a friend of Davies's 19-year-old daughter Piera turns up and unselfconsciously shows off a scar on her thigh, the result of an operation. A little later, Davies's godmother Elsbeth, a tremendously sharp woman of 80, shows up and sits sagely on a nearby chair for the rest of the interview, chipping in with witty comments. Buckland, who has designed most of her shows and whose books on art and photography cover the walls, completes the ensemble by cheerfully, absent-mindedly wandering in and out.
Only Davies seems a little at odds with these surroundings. Despite bursts of girlish laughter, she comes across as serious, careful, apologetic. As she speaks, she has a habit of self-consciously intertwining her long limbs, a tendency that becomes more pronounced as her ideas grow more abstract. "Nothing is simple," she says, adopting a convoluted position, "and I know in my own existence there are constantly these hiccups when you are thrown, and you have to re-form and re-move. I love the odd balance points, not the grand gestures where the swing is big. I'd like to develop the odder rhythms and counterpoints, to make dance with these broken-up shards."
It is not difficult to imagine that Davies was once, perhaps throughout adolescence and beyond, extremely shy: "She was certainly not the singing, dancing, tap-dancing girl who would get up on a table and give an impromptu performance," recalls Micha Bergese, who danced alongside Davies in the LCDT in the 70s. "She enjoyed a giggle and a laugh but she wasn't the flamboyant one who would stand in front of the line and kick her legs high. She would often take you aside and have a serious talk rather than have a chat with the group."
When it comes to her work, though, Davies can be ferociously assured and resolute. She has assiduously built up a formidable troupe of dancers and has held the company together despite constant funding difficulties. For the most part, she is an easy collaborator: "There was little discussion," says composer Kevin Volans, who worked with her through the 90s. "She would come to me and say: 'Write something beautiful.' Then I would hand over the music and say: 'Do something wonderful with it.'" But as Volans discovered when they quarrelled during Wild Air (1999), she is more than willing to put the needs of the company before long-standing professional relationships. He says: "Behind her is an aggressive group of people who are not as gifted as she is, but who are building up Siobhan as the star of the show, to the detriment of her collaborators. It doesn't fit with her approach, but she doesn't object to it." Characteristically, Davies is more than willing to acknowledge failings and contradictions: "I think I've recognised all the opposites that a human being can be," she says, "and all of those, I certainly am."
Susan Davies - she changed her name to Siobhan because there already was an Equity member called Sue Davies - was born in London on September 18 1950, the only child of Graham and Tempé (nee Wallick) Davies. Her mother was a journalist while her father ran the family textile business, the main outlet of which was Hunt and Winterbottom, an upmarket shop in Golden Square, in east London. By the time of Sue's arrival, her parents' relationship was strained. "It wasn't a very successful marriage," says Davies. "She was remarkably beautiful. And I think that my father was funny. She needed his humour and he needed this rather gorgeous person. But they just could not get on together. So I was brought up in a flat in which they were very rarely there as a couple. Looking back on it I remember acres and acres of quiet."
Davies spent much of her childhood with her godparents, Elsbeth and Hans Juda, who lived upstairs in the same building. Immigrants from Germany who had founded the Ambassador, a magazine for textiles, art and design, they were also avid art collectors, friendly with luminaries such as John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon, as well as Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. "We had no children and it was so wonderful to have her around," says Elsbeth. "She would stage little plays and little imaginative things. She wasn't a giggly sort of child. But my husband was a very imaginative man and he knew how to engage her in his fantasies and draw her out."
At school, Davies didn't distinguish herself academically. "I do feel that was because there was unrest at home," she says. "My mother very much wanted her daughter to be highly independent, highly educated, and to be able to look after herself regardless of marriage or circumstances. She would be very strict about how I was learning and I became overwhelmingly frightened of being able to do anything." Dance featured very little in her early years, apart from occasional visits to see the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. On leaving school, she was accepted into the Hammersmith School of Art and Building, although she was still unsure whether to pursue a career in art. "I think I was rather raw and emotionally not together. This is not blaming my parents at all, because I think that is a waste of time. I think I needed to find where I would fit into a larger community." Shortly after she arrived at Hammersmith, however, a friend suggested she tag along to dance classes in what Davies describes as a "cat-piss-smelling studio above a dressmaking factory off Oxford Street". It was in these classes, attended by a beatnik assortment of artists, designers and performers, that Davies found the sense of community she was looking for: "I took one class and I never stopped. From then on, I took a class every day until I pretty much gave up art college."
At the time, it was impossible to foresee the huge impact these impromptu classes would have on the course of modern dance in Britain. Also among the students was fellow art student Richard Alston, who was immediately drawn to the gangly, awkward Davies: "I couldn't help noticing Sue," he says, "because at our dance class she was the one who took the register and rushed out to get lunch for everybody. She wasn't a goody-goody, just enthusiastic." The classes were conducted by Robert Cohan, England's arch-disciple of the Martha Graham method, who would shortly afterwards found the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, now seen as Britain's first modern dance company. Within five weeks of taking her first dance lesson, Davies found herself performing in the LCDT's first production. "It was a piece called the Family of Man by Allen Littleholst," she remembers. "All I did was walk across the back."
Soon Davies was dancing lead roles in pieces such as Cell, Stages and Eclipse by Robert Cohan as well as work by choreographers such as Anna Sokolov, Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey. One of the things that set Davies apart from other dancers was that her gangly physicality pushed the boundaries of the expressive Graham technique. Misha Bergese says: "She was a very languid and poetic dancer. She always had a very clear idea of how to realise the Graham technique in her way, with her body. She started to formalise her own movement language."
Along with Alston, she found herself drawn to the second generation of American innovators, which was spearheaded by the legendary Merce Cunningham. When Cunningham dancer Viola Farber came to teach the company, Alston and Davies were captivated by this new, liberating, non-narrative approach. When Cunningham toured Europe in 1969, Alston and Davies hitchhiked to Cannes to attend performances. "It was thrilling," says Alston. "The theatre was a huge inflatable outdoor bubble, in which these giant silver helium pillows would waft into the audience as part of the show. Typical students, we'd arrived without money or anywhere to stay, and the hotels were all Riviera versions of the Ritz. After hours of tramping around we were eventually taken in at a village post office, which also happened to serve food. It turned out that Madame's husband was an ace chef, and that night, as we were having our pension meal, Merce Cunningham and John Cage turned up to eat. I was dumbstruck, but Sue, who was always much bolder than I was, went over to say what fans we were and please could we see some rehearsals."
In keeping with Robert Cohan's policy of encouraging his dancers to choreograph, Davies was promoted to associate choreographer of the LCDT in 1972, and began to work on her first pieces. "She was very very articulate and organised," remembers dancer Linda Gibbs. "She would come in each morning with her ideas and her movement ideas written down and drawings of stick men." According to Davies, Relay (1972) "used the metaphor of sport, what happens to a shoulder and an arm when it is serving in tennis, what happens to the back and chest when it is trying to protect itself in boxing". Pilot (1974) "was inspired by the fact that we were always touring, so I did a piece where the dancers are travelling all around the stage, shifting suitcases from one location to the other". Diary (1975) "was about a dancer's schedule, about how you would rehearse on Thursday from 3pm to 4.15pm, or Friday 2pm till 3.10pm. I found that very irritating. So I made a piece from my diary."
In 1976, Davies took a break from the LCDT and flew to New York to join Richard Alston, who was studying at the Merce Cunningham dance studio. To support themselves, they took a variety of odd jobs, from usherette to cleaner. However, the real adventure took place in Cunningham's Greenwich Village studio, where Davies took classes with Cunningham and danced in a programme Alston choreographed at the studio. Revitalised by her New York sojourn, Davies returned to London to begin work on Sphinx, which would explore the way animals move on all fours. "Then I tried to tilt the body back up and stand but to keep that knowledge about the body and imprint it back through movement."
It was also on Sphinx that Davies met her partner, David Buckland, who was invited to take stills photographs for the production: "Sue was wearing this really long wig and was in a foul mood," he recalls. "She stomped into the studio, did her bit and then stomped out again. That was the first time I'd ever really seen her and I just went: 'What is that?' She scared the life out of me." Until this time, Davies had been infamous in dance circles for her total eschewal of romantic attachments, so the burgeoning relationship with Buckland came as quite a surprise to friends and fellow dancers as well as to Davies herself. "I was a disaster," she says. "I was very shy of anything to do with that [relationships] at all, quite stupidly in retrospect. I think I was frightened. I liked to run back to my own space. How we managed to get together at all is a source of astonishment to this day." Somehow, both managed to negotiate the perils of an awkward "dating" period and a romance developed.
By 1980, Davies had begun to branch out in a number of different directions, forming her own company, Siobhan Davies and Dancers, performing in Richard Alston's new group and making pieces for Rambert Dance Company and the English National Opera, while keeping up a punishing schedule at the LCDT. "There were as many things as I could do," she says, "because that was what I needed." Then, in 1982, Davies teamed up with Alston and Australian choreographer Ian Spink to form Second Stride, a modern dance team that, Spink recalls, "would be a kind of supergroup that could be promoted as a mid-scale company, and could play larger venues that might have been difficult as three small-scale companies". Despite the striking difference in styles between Davies's pared-down abstraction, Alston's frenetic experimentation and Spink's oddball exuberance, the company somehow managed to achieve unity. "It had its moments," says Spink. "I think that Sue was able to explore different territory with Second Stride, which was rather healthy for her. I think it set her up very well for working later on with her own group. I think that she was able to clear a lot of things out of the loft and focus on what would sustain."
In 1983, Davies decided to give up performing to start a family: her daughter Piera was born in 1984 and a son, Sean, in 1986. Then, in 1987, she handed the reigns of Second Stride over to Spink and, with the help of a Fulbright Scholarship, headed off with her young family to America in search of new inspiration. "In Europe the countryside is filled with detail, the church and the spire and the cow and the fence and the maize and the corn and the wildflowers and the lot," she says. "But you go across Wyoming and there is nothing but land. The horizon is all the way around you and the back of your neck takes on a whole different sensation - because what is in front of you is also behind you." The trip, however, took a more sinister turn when David Buckland contracted a virus that, after they returned to England, attacked his heart. "My heart completely gave up and stopped for four or five minutes," he says. "They didn't expect me to survive. One night, when I was in intensive care, Sue sat up the whole night with my brother, and I think they just thought that was it." Through a combination of major surgery and a minor miracle, Buckland survived and now leads, with the help of a pacemaker, a relatively healthy, life.
Despite these difficulties, Davies persisted in her idea of starting another company - the Siobhan Davies Dance Company. Their first piece, White Man Sleeps (1988), set to a beautiful, pulsating minimalist score by Kevin Volans, was more assured and complex than anything she had done before, as the dancers weaved through the grid of a patterned stage. However, the real new departure came later that year with Wyoming , which grafted some of the spirit of the American prairie on to the stage of the Riverside Studios, as Davies's dancers carved lonely arcs into Buckland's dust-bowl setting. These made an immediate impact, and were followed up by Cover Him With Grass (1989), an eccentric, stripped-down piece set to an African-inspired score; and Different Trains (1990), which was built on Steve Reich's eerily minimalist score based on the transportation of Jewish prisoners to the Nazi concentration camps. "Siobhan Davies responds with dances that echo the composer's thoughts," wrote Mary Clark in the Guardian, "the movement for the piece having a directness and simplicity that heightens the anguish of the tragic years." This was followed by White Bird Featherless (1992), which contrasted Gerald Barry's unwieldy, keening vocal score with a livid, shimmering set.
By 1995, the previous five years of intense work were beginning to take their toll, but instead of giving in to fatigue, Davies reacted against it with The Art of Touch , set to a relentless Scarlatti score: "I was tired and I had to do something with a vivid speed." The piece, in which even the slower sections maintain an infectious buoyancy, picked up, in 1995, a Prudential and an Olivier award. "Sensationally beautiful," said the Daily Telegraph, "full of courtly elegance and sly merriment, the dance has an almost lustful physicality that is quite a surprise".
After this resounding affirmation, expectations increased. Davies responded with a flurry of pieces: Trespass (1996), with Barry's shuddering, volcanic score and Davies's jerky movements; Bank (1997), which was a return to more simple, geometric movements; and Wild Air (1999), her first full-length piece. By this time, some critics felt that the work was showing signs of creative exhaustion. "It is essentially a chamber piece that has been stretched, over 90 minutes, to breaking point," wrote Anne Sachs in the Evening Standard. "Its smallness and reserve suggest she is trying to conserve the dancers' energy, as though mothering them through a longer piece than usual. This air is anything but wild." After her next piece, Of Oil and Water in 2000, Davies decided to take another break to recharge her creative batteries and continue her quest to find a permanent base for the company. "In order to make dance you need people and space and time," she says.
She returned in 2002 with Plants and Ghosts, which innovatively used stilts and elastic rods to extend the dance area outside the confines of the body. "I had the idea of using them to represent sinews bursting through the skin, exploding out of the body and into space," she recalls. Her new piece, Bird Song, which makes its London debut at the Linbury Studio on October 20, is built around the call of the Australian pied butcher bird. "I put that right in the centre of the piece and then tried to create a piece of movement that would lead me to that piece of bird song and then get me away from it. So, while the song is quite a small part of the total, it is the centre of gravity of the piece."
But by far the most ambitious of all of her recent ventures is the dance centre, which she hopes will be ready for its first classes and performances within a year. "I'm trying to get more people to become involved in this odd art form that can provide such strange revelations. I hope it allows you to think about human beings in a different way." The space could also inspire her to break new ground.
Siobhan (Susan) Davies
Born: September 18 1950.
Education: Queensgate school for Girls; Hammersmith College of Art and Building.
Relationships: David Buckland (one son, one daughter).
Some works: 1972 Relay; '74 Pilot; '75 Diary; '88 White Man Sleeps, Wyoming; '89 Cover Him With Grass, Drawn Breath; '90 Different Trains; '91 Arctic Heart; '92 White Bird Featherless, Winnsboro' Cotton Mill Blues, Make- Make; '93 Wanting to Tell Stories; '94 The Glass Blew In; '95 Wild Translations, The Art of Touch; '96 Trespass, Affections; '97 Bank; '98 Eighty Eight; '99 Wild Air; 2000 Of Oil and Water; '02 Plants and Ghosts; '04 Bird Song.
Honours: 2002 CBE for outstanding contribution to dance.