Dancing to the sound of silence.

Byline: By Tamsin Lewis

Choreographer Siobhan Davies' latest dance show started with silence, as she explains to Tamzin Lewis.

"What influence does music have on a dance audience?" asks Siobhan Davies. "This is one of my big questions. It clearly has a tremendous influence and I want to understand more about it."

For her latest show In Plain Clothes, Siobhan began reducing dance to its purest form by choreographing without any music. But not entirely without rhythm. She asked composer Matteo Fargion <OK> to come up with what she calls a "silent score".

Siobhan says: "The score was silent but there was a musical structure which was seemingly simple but actually quite complex. This structure meant that the dancers looked as if they were involved with rhythm.

"I don't want to negate the influence of music, but working with silence makes me look at how the dancers communicate without the support of music. Each of the dancers made very short but very precise phrases of movement. They could then choose when and how to place their chapters of movement. That formed the beginnings of the mosaic of the whole piece."

Just as the choreography for In Plain Clothes developed, the "silent score" matured into an audible score inspired by Italian folk songs. However, Siobhan warns this does not mean the piece is set to tractional lyrical folk music. The music is deconstructed and like the set, minimal.

"It would be dangerous to imagine that you are going to hear song," says Siobhan.

"The music is Matteo speaking with a quite strange instrumentation underneath. There is a fair amount of silence in the piece and some distant piano folk songs.

"He was influenced by traditional music, but people should not expect folk songs as they might appear in a film. They have been reduced to their essence."

While this process does seem fairly intellectual, Siobhan insists In Plain Clothes is not dry. And she says: "It doesn't mean that I don't celebrate music and love it when music and dance go together. I can't help but wonder what it is all about. The more questions you unravel the more turn up."

Siobhan Davies Dance (SDD) was formed in 1988 and Siobhan was awarded a CBE in 2002 for her outstanding contribution to dance.

Wyoming, choreographed by Siobhan, is on the A level dance syllabus and Bird Song, the company's 2004 production, will become a set GCSE work in September. The Siobhan Davies Studios opened this January in London as a permanent home for the company.

While rehearsing In Plain Clothes, Siobhan invited a heart surgeon, architect, linguist and landscape designer, all of whom had never been in a dance studio before, to talk to the company.

"They weren't really collaborators. The poor heart surgeon wasn't going to come into the room and start choreographing. But in some form or other you could relate each person to dance. The body for the surgeon, space for the architect and landscape designer and phrasing for the linguist. In some cases, we went to where they worked, so all the dancers went to watch heart surgery.

"We had lots of common things to talk about. It made us all feel more confident about dance as a place of exchange. But I don't think the audience will watch the piece and see the influence of heart surgery!"

In Plain Clothes is so called as Siobhan wanted to make a simple work for dance studios, and to "get on with it, without overdressing".

* In Plain Clothes is at Dance City, Newcastle, from tonight until Saturday. Box office: (0191) 261- 0505. There will be pre-show talks on Thursday and Friday with architect Sarah Wigglesworth and SDD associate director David Buckland (respectively) and a post show talk on Friday with Siobhan.