Siobhan Davies CBE
Pro-Chancellor, distinguished friends, colleagues, graduands and guests.
Siobhan Davies CBE is a renowned British choreographer. She has created over 60 works to critical acclaim: twice-winning an Olivier Award, and being awarded a plethora of other accolades, including Digital Dance Awards and a South Bank Show Award.
Born in London in 1950, she first trained in art before starting her career as a dancer during the 1970s. After studying at the London Contemporary Dance School, she became lead dancer and choreographer for London Contemporary Dance Theatre, making her first piece, Relay, in 1972. Alongside her work with London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Siobhan also worked more experimentally in the independent sector, first as a dancer with Richard Alston and Dancers, then as artistic director of Siobhan Davies and Dancers, which she founded in 1981.
The following year, she joined forces with Richard Alston and Ian Spink to form Second Stride, one of the most influential independent companies of the 1980s. In 1986, she underlined her status as an innovator by winning the Fulbright Arts Fellowship, the first ever time it was awarded to a choreographer.
In 1987, she left London Contemporary Dance Theatre, left Second Stride, and left the country - taking a year’s sabbatical in America as a result of the Fellowship. On her return, she joined Rambert Dance Company as Associate Choreographer (until 1992) and founded the Siobhan Davies Dance Company in 1988.
Her first works displayed a renewed vitality: the liquid energies of White Man Sleeps for her own company, and Embarque for Rambert, showed a new-found freedom, while Wyoming, again for her own company, explored scale and setting, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds.
Since founding Siobhan Davies Dance, she has consistently worked closely with collaborating dance artists to ensure that their own artistic enquiry was part of the creative process. Over the years, Siobhan Davies Dance has evolved from a national & international touring dance company into a ground-breaking investigative contemporary arts organisation.
By 2002, she moved away from the traditional theatre circuit and started making work for gallery spaces and alternative locations, including an aircraft hangar and at Victoria Miro Gallery. In 2002 Siobhan was also awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours in recognition of her outstanding contribution to dance.
In 2006, the RIBA award-winning Siobhan Davies Studios opened, realising Davies’ long-standing goal of establishing a permanent base for her organisation and for independent dance artists. The Studios are now a vibrant contemporary arts space in central London, filled with dance, film, visual art and craft, through a programme of exhibitions, performances, participation projects and new commissions from leading contemporary artists.
Soon after her move into The Studios, Siobhan began a collaboration with researchers here at Coventry University, which continues today, beginning with a joint project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to create a digital archive of her work. Siobhan Davies RePlay is the first digital archive of dance in the UK, one of just a few worldwide, and is a primary point of reference for researchers, students and artists.
Her recent works have been presented at some of the most prestigious art institutions in the UK, including; Arnolfini in Bristol; The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Roundhouse, Whitechapel Gallery and South London Gallery in London; Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester; Ikon in Birmingham; Turner Contemporary in Margate and Tramway and Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.
A leader, innovator and visionary in her field, we are delighted to welcome Siobhan to Coventry Cathedral today to acknowledge her influence on the world of dance.
In recognition of her significant contribution to the broad field of British dance, Coventry University, by decision of the Academic Board, has the privilege of conferring the Degree of Doctor of Arts, honoris causa, on Siobhan Davies.