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In September this year, Siobhan Davies launched a project called Bank2001 designed to give six dancers a unique chance to experience the creative and working methods of her company. She talked to ballet.co about the project and about future plans for the company.

Can you explain where the idea for Bank2001 originated?

There's a mass of places, really, where the idea started. The simplest one is that when the company is at work, we do open classes, so dancers who are curious or interested in our teachers come and do class, and we see them over a period of two or three years. They improve greatly, and sometimes I go and see the performances they do and I am consciously aware that there isn't enough work for the good dancers. They should be working, and there isn't enough work. But I don't want my company to get incredibly large, nor can I be responsible for masses of people, nor do all those good dancers necessarily want to work for me, for a long period of time anyway - but what they might want is a period of time to look at this work, find out about it, and move on.

Siobhan Davies - dancers rehearsing in studio
photograph by © Nick White

These are what, 18 year olds?

No, no - this has got nothing to do with the idea of training. It's to do with using dancers who I would consider professional. They need more experiences - they tell me they need more experiences to improve their artistry, to fill the library of movement and ideas within their bodies so that they have more to talk with, more to play with. We're talking about people who've already got 3-4, if not 5-6 years' experience or more, and it's about trying to help professionals develop, using us as a resource for that development. Some of the pieces that I've done - and Bank was a very particular one - have a lot of concrete, clear ideas that run through them, which means that you can use them as a sort of blueprint for revealing to another group of dancers a methodology for producing movement in a piece, rather than just slap it on.

How did you choose which dancers to use?

Two of them were chosen already, because they were dancers I'd seen coming to class and performing regularly, but not having enough work. Then we had a day of choosing - I can't remember how many hundred people applied to do it, it was extraordinary - and we whittled it down to about 25. Those 25 dancers we worked with for a day, in as highly productive a way as possible - a long class, a period of teaching bits of the repertory - in fact I didn't teach Bank, I've used parts of Oil and Water. And those 25 people said at the end of the day, 'Obviously we can't all be one of the six chosen, but this has been a great day, and can we do more of this?' There's a hunger for learning, and I think that dancers are wonderful in their ability to turn round and say 'every day is a learning day'. I find it very moving, that all dancers do that. But because they put themselves in the position of learning every day, if you're not careful they feel like students every day. They need to be treated as professional in that their learning every day is part of their profession, and therefore in Bank2001 we pay them to learn, because that's what is happening in the more fully-fledged companies, the companies that work 12 months in the year.

You mean companies like Rambert?

Yes - or the Richard Alston Dance Company - you are learning all the time, but you are at least in the position of being within one place, within a safe environment, paid all the time and cared for. Independent dance - and, fine, it's a very good thing that it remains independent - is a much tougher life: all dancers expect that, and accept that there will be periods of not being able to work, provided there are choice moments during the year when they really can work. But having made that choice I don't necessarily see why they should suffer all the way down the line, so that by the time they've reached 35 or 38 they're exhausted, they've never earned more than £10,000 a year: they've contributed to the advancement of the art form, and they haven't been valued enough. I want to address that - I can't address it totally, but in small splinters of activity I can try - and one way to do that is to give these 6 or 8 chosen professionals a chance to have a longish rehearsal period. It's about five weeks.

Siobhan Davies and Sarah Warsop
photograph by © Nick White

The first 2 weeks, they didn't learn the piece - they went through the process of how the piece was made. That was with Sarah Warsop and Deborah Saxon - we had worked ahead of time to re-remember the processes and make quite sure we were accurate about them and understood them. Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece. So the piece is as it was in 1997, but some of the movement has been refocused, remade, to make quite sure that the process these dancers went through actually had an impact on Bank2001. And the reason for that is that they then not only have a physical understanding of the piece, but they have worked through the intelligence that went to make the piece.

And then after the rehearsal period they're giving 4 performances?

Yes, showings not performances. This year we went to dance colleges, The Place, Laban, RAD, Swindon Dance Agency. The project is really about the whole learning process, as well as the performances; but on the other hand, speaking to the dancers, they also needed that sense of gathering information, storing it, and being able to show it to other people, therefore the showings were a vital part of the process.

So they take away from the time they've spent with you not only the experience of working with you and learning the piece, but also they've added to their skills: they have a clearer idea of the creative process, which they can apply to working with other choreographers, not just with Siobhan Davies.

Yes - it's the same in any other work - the more you massage your thinking the more capable I believe you are of expanding how you go about things and learning.

Is it a coincidence that you've been able to set this up in a year when your company has been dormant? Will you be able to do it when you're back into working full time with your company?

Well, it's not full time - my dancers are only paid for six months of the year in two three-month blocks; but yes, it is possible we could do it in another year. It was good this year because we had more time to set it up and go through all the 'how to do it' bits: we've learned a lot by doing it this year, so it would be more straightforward to set up another time. We need to find the money to do it again, but there was such a genuine interest among the dancers who did come forward that I feel we should. We could ask artists from abroad to come in too, so that there could be a mixing and matching of skills from Europe, America and here which would widen our world. The dance world is too small in lots of ways - it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas. We need to think on a broader plane, we need to do more than we're doing.

More than putting a dance on stage?

Yes. What we do now is to be valued - but we need to do more, so that it's more exciting to other people, and therefore that excitement shines back on us and we're able to have the energy to do more, to widen our creativity. I think if you look at how much stuff is going on in every single one of the art forms, it is unbelievably exciting, and we need to be rooted in other places, not just ourselves. One of our problems is our sense of discipline - dancers have an extraordinary sense of self-discipline. It's a beautiful thing, a useful thing, and we actually require it to do what we're doing, but we mustn't allow it to put us in a corridor where we're just not seeing what else is going on. It's not just for its influence on us, but to know that we can play a part in it, to understand the influence that we have outside our own existence. For instance, I do think the direction of opera has changed because of how choreographers have been inventive in moving large groups of singers. Fine artists and theatre designers have used the same tools of light, film and new technology. the body has been a constant source for ideas outside dance.

Siobhan Davies - dancers rehearsing in studio
photograph by © Nick White

There seems to be a rather specialised audience for contemporary dance in London and I find it very interesting, seeing dance in other places, to find a general arts audience which just goes to see whatever's on, and which seems to accept quite extreme works. It's a pity that dance in London can't appeal to the same sort of people.

On the other hand in London you can get an audience that desires dance to go as far as it can go: they've seen the bricks of ideas built over a period so therefore there is an acceptance of what otherwise might seem out on a limb. What's harder outside London is they may not have seen all those bricks being built; so suddenly a dance company turns up, and there may be in their mind's eye a question of 'Is this dance, or isn't it?'; or as you say they may just turn round and completely accept it because they haven't had to follow dogma, or they haven't had to follow a line of knowledge. There's that dilemma - you want an audience to really enjoy what you're doing, and sometimes that requires them to know a lot about your subject. On the other hand you also want that complete freshness that says 'I know nothing about this'. For instance a whole load of scientists - because of family associations - often come and see my work, and when they talk about it, it's in completely different terms, and I love that.

You mean they talk about it in terms of its emotional effect on them?

Yes - I think that's true.

And when you're making a dance, are you thinking of what effect you want it to have on the audience, or are you making what you have to make, and letting the audience make of it what they will?

It's neither. I don't start a piece knowing exactly what effect it's going to have. There is a seed of an idea that I could never articulate, right at the beginning of the piece, literally like one cell. When I go into the studio that cell is somewhere within me but I leave it alone. I devise methods, processes, talks, discussions among the dancers, and we start to make tiny fragments of movement, based on a plethora of ideas. They need to be dance ideas, because there's no point using ideas that would be far better on film or far better in literature: I'm trying to find ideas that I think the body moving, the person moving, is going to be able to deal with.

And gradually these cells of ideas begin to grow into clusters - it's a bit like its own evolution - and these clusters start telling you things about themselves, they tell you about structures, forces, dynamics and emotion, particularly if you're on guard to make sure that all those forces are coming into play. And then the piece starts to shape up even more, and it begins to have its own agenda: I'm partially in control of it, so I can pull and push it, but at the same time it can pull and push me, which is a vital part of the whole organisation. If I only made dances about my own experience in dance, it would always be on my track, and I don't want that, I want to be on the track of where dance can take me. Why limit dance to my understanding, when what I want to do is learn massively, by this art form telling me constantly about what it's like to be a pperson, about life, via dance? So that's why I don't want to have all the ideas too early.

Then the piece starts to get finished, and lo and behold that cell of the idea, from right at the beginning, is normally there right at the end. Then you take it to an audience, and a lot of our later rehearsals are all about what will the audience see at this point, what kind of things we are being clear about. That clarity is very important to the performers and to me, but it cannot be housed in a linear sentence and that's confusing for some audiences - they feel that to appreciate it what they see, they need to be able to talk simply and clearly about it. If they went to their neighbours the next day and were asked 'What did you see?', they would love to be able to say 'I saw this'. It can be hard for them - if you go to a play, you can say 'I saw The Homecoming, and it was about this - Romeo and Juliet, it was about this' - they've got a method of describing it, whereas we don't quite have a method of describing a dance event which doesn't have a story.

Running and Teaching - Siobhan Davies, Sarah Warsop and Deborah Saxon
photograph by © Nick White

Which is the point of dance - if you could describe it there would be no point in making a dance about it.

Exactly - and it's fascinating, all those dilemmas.

Your working method must mean you have to have a very trusting relationship with your dancers

I have a very trusting relationship with my dancers, which I value - and I believe they value the reverse - a great deal.

Which takes us on to your plans for your own company...

We start in January and we finish the new piece in May, and hopefully we'll be able to use the RAD studios again in August/September, before we go out on tour.

I know you're applying for lottery money to provide a permanent building. If you're successful, given that you only work with your own dancers for half the year, and you're on tour for a lot of that, do you have plans for using the building for the rest of the year?

Oh yes - for a start there'd be the Bank project, which would take a couple of months; and there would be a collection of dance classes relevant to research, and to researching dance ideas. I really want the building to help the profession. That sounds terribly grand, and terribly pompous, and I can only do a certain amount of it. But if a studio was available every day, for class, before the company started rehearsing; if there were courses that ran in the summer and in the winter that dealt with the idea of replenishing dancers as they mature; and if there were a small research space, so that individuals had enough room to work out ideas. I think it would be full of practical, imaginative events that would contribute to help keep this art form creative.

Before we spoke, I'd thought that you were looking at a sort of post-graduate school, but you're actually talking about dancers who are even further down their professional careers?

I've always been interested in dancers who have worked for a considerable time. They've had a career, and they've had to make a choice about how they're going to use their intelligent knowledge for the last part of their working life. I'm always fascinated by that decision making process. This is a really good stage of a dancer's life. They can see that the end is coming up - they might have ten more years, but it's not as it is when you leave college, when it's endless - they're at that point where they want to achieve something very particular, now and within the next 7 to 10 years. And they know it's not necessarily going to be there for them. So it's a rich and exact moment in their lives. And maybe we can extend those working lives longer - there are lots of dancers, as we know, who do work until they're 50, and we need to help support that as an idea.

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The dancers taking part in Bank2001 were

• Andrea Buckley
• Melanie Clarke
• Robin Dingemans
• David McCormick
• Sonja Peedo
• Joana Simas

The studio performances took place from 16th - 19th October 2001