Sound makes sense in new dance drama

THE award-winning Siobhan Davies Dance Company is set to make its Edinburgh debut on Wednesday with the Scottish premiere of Bird Song - the second of its major works to bring the audience strikingly close to the dancers.

Presented "in the round", the inspiration for Bird Song is the call of the Australian Pied Butcher Bird which, for this piece, is hidden beneath layers of intriguing music and sound. Artistic collaborators David Ward and Andrew Pink have created a luminous world controlled by these sweeping layers of light and sound and added a score that blends elements of jazz, classical and digital recordings.

Eight bodies inhabit this world where sound can dominate the senses. Listening, each dancer individually responds to what they hear, causing the completed work to contain both rehearsed and improvised material. Spectators share the sensory experience as the performers move through the different areas of light, images, music and sound, literally inches in front of them.