Dancer in a Glass Box...

Endangered Species is an unusual dance piece. It combines the mediums of dance and media; the use of projection being something of a trademark for her work.
Initially, Siobhan visited the Arctic and found that she wasn’t inspired by the landscape but more how vulnerable her body became within this landscape. She concluded that “…expression in the sub-zero temperatures of the High Arctic (were) severely limited in nature and range.”¹ I find this fascinating and had never before thought of the effects a certain atmosphere has on your movement. For example being in a really hot room makes you become lethargic and slow where as in Davis’ case, the cold weather physically tightens your muscles and makes movement small and rigid. During the piece we see the dancer restricted by the rods in her costume and at first this can seem to give a new environment for her to explore but gradually more are added and she becomes entrapped.
The rods are often manipulated by the dancer into bending almost in two. As an audience member we wait and wait for the plastic to snap but this never happens. This intense power struggle between rod and dancer reflects the fragility of the body vs. the motivation to move, a concept Davis explored in her choreographic process.¹ When we think about the body in relation to the landscape we (being the dancer) are inspired or ‘motivated’ to move however we become restricted and fought against by the atmosphere and intense cold (being the rod) showing ‘fragility’ in the body.
Endangered Species is not performed as a live show but in fact a projection of the dancer in a glass box. Siobhan Davis has manipulated the dancer’s image to represent something not so human, like a past or future evolution of the body and encased it as a museum exhibit. I don’t quite understand the meaning of this other than possibly hinting at the relation between landscape and evolution. I have the impression that Siobhan longs for an evolutionary change in the way we move as dancers to overcome these restrictions; we should be leaving behind the old ways of moving and displaying them in glass cases as a reminder but moving forward in a new liberated style without the representational rods of restriction.
Over all Endangered Species reminds us not only of the fragility of the human but the fragility of movement. It has opened my eyes to recognise in myself the atmosphere and whether or not my movement can survive within its boundaries.





¹ http://www.siobhandavies.com/dance/dance-works/overview/endangered-species.html