Siobhan Davies at Victoria Miro

Siobhan Davies started making dance in the 70s. The first piece I saw was the stunning 13 Keys to Scarlatti, played live, upstairs in the Atlantis building on Brick Lane, on an X-shaped stage raised about 50cm, in a huge hall. There were no seats: you walked around and could stand quite close to the dancers. Siobhan Davies says it's a privilege to work close to dancers in the studio and likes to offer that proximity to the public. It was an energetic piece with, I think, three dancers from the Royal Ballet as well as her own group, and to watch dancers like that from a couple of metres away, instead of from a distant seat, was unforgettable.

Victoria Miro moved her gallery from Cork Street to an old warehouse near the canal in lower Islington about eight years ago. It's a wonderful space to wander round and look at what she's showing. She now has an even more wonderful huge room up on the roof, one wall being floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at London skies, and a floor that dreams of milongas. I think this is the second piece she's invited Siobhan Davies to make to complement a gallery exhibition. Called Minutes, the 'dancing' is neither strenuous nor physically demanding: at times it resembled a rather genteel 60s happening, people in ordinary clothes doing slightly unusual things. But it accumulated into a relaxed, enjoyable 40 minutes: Davies sat with a watch counting out the minutes and I arrived as she counted '20'. At '60' all the performers left. The work is continuous, so I guess that after a short pause they start again.

I filmed an installation outside, and a video installation of dance by Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop. Then the batteries died, so I have only how I remember Minutes.



I'd like to add a bit to the above. The dance 'language' used isn't in any way the language you normally expect of highly-trained dancers. There are no moves that only highly skilled dancers can do. This is choreography in the broadest sense of the organisation of movement. There's nothing breath-taking in it, apart from its simplicity. But this actually involves the watchers, the audience, even more, as it's easier for one's body to partake, passively, in something that close to the movements of everyday life. Thus we sit, are involved in small but significant ways, and the minutes are counted as they pass. Some of them seem long, some seem short. Time and movement.