Review of Siobhan Davies work - Plants and Ghosts.

I watched this piece on film.
The work starts out with one dancer in the space moving her feet rapidly, (for search of a better word) 'bobbing' up and down whilst slowly moving backwards. She moves backwards though the space which you can then see is a transverse staging space with audience on either side while the dancing takes place down the middle. The music by Max Eastley is an installation piece of music that sounds naturalistic, as if we are outside. The basic long black trousers and black sleeveless tops prevent to costume from distracting from the piece while at the same time making the limbs of the dancers stand out as the lighting is fairly dark and blue. After the first dancer has moved back she is joined by more dancers, weaving and moving around the space in a straight line floor patteren back towards the front of the space only just avoiding eachother as they do so. The dancers often drop down to the floor where they either pause their movement or repeat one movement several times before getting back up again.
After this there is a solo by a male dancer. He moves on the floor is more subtle gestures which contrasts dramtically to the group work which is a lot faster. His movements are fairly jerky and pulsed as he lies, sits, rolls and crawls around the floor. Although the movement is almost a little uncomfortable to watch it still encaputres the audience to all the details of it.
Throughout the piece the dancers seem to bounce inbetween this idea of fast fluid movements standing and pulsating slower movements on the floor. Another key theme that shows through whether intended or not seems to be this idea of contortsion within the body, with hands twisted so the wrists are facing forwards.
My favorite part of the piece is a solo part performed by a woman, this part uses voice and sign language. The movement idea is the sign language that goes directly with the voice used which tells a story. This story is repeated and every time this happens it gets a little more complex, so starting from a sentence about a woman eating meat and biting her tounge it develops into a full anicdote of how she got there, who she is with, that she doesnt like pain and so on. Each time the story develops we find out a little more of this information and there is a lot of humor in the story through the suprises we find out, such as when we find out the man she is talking to/ breaking up with is married.