A film by Hugo Glendinning, with Siobhan Davies, Rosemary Lee and Jonathan Burrows.
This film proposes living archive as a document of contemporary dance methodologies and questions at a moment of rapid change and precarity within the field. Choreographers Siobhan Davies, Rosemary Lee and Jonathan Burrows draw upon long embodied histories of practice to reflect upon what may be lost and what might survive, and how to navigate between necessary innovation and vital lineage of ideas, physicalities and philosophies within the form. The film is both a current record and future resource for contemporary dance scholars and practitioners.
Siobhan Davies has recently created a series of dance works rooted in forms of self-archiving, and in particular Table of Contents (2010) and Transparent (2022). Rosemary Lee is an acknowledged visionary and leader in the field of participatory dance work dealing with landscape and the meeting of body and environment, including Circadian (2019), with 24 dancers of different ages performing the same solo on an empty beach over a 24 hour period. Jonathan Burrows is known for his interdisciplinary work with composer Matteo Fargion, with whom he has recently created the two duets Rewriting (2022) and The Unison Piece (2025). All three artists come from diverse backgrounds and practices, but their conversation reveals the intersections of shared concerns. What does it mean when we talk about the ‘performative’? How does a dance work meet an audience? Modes of attention and the importance of change for how dance connects, communicates and is recognised.
Siobhan Davies, Rosemary Lee and Jonathan Burrows are Associate Professors at the Centre for Dance Research Coventry University, and the film is supported by C-DaRE with the help of Scott deLahunta.
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