sirenscrossing

Type of Work
Contemporary dance / Installation / Live Art

Company Policy
For several years sirenscrossing has been creating experiential, site specific, time-based works for small groups of audience. The movement of these audiences through time and space is as important to the work and the experience, as is the devised movement of 'performers' or the juxtaposition of events, images, words, sound and place that might occur during the course of a piece. The use of place has often centred on exploring and revealing the psychogeographic topography of specific urban environments. Choreographer Carolyn Deby is interested in the collision between the built environment of cities and the forces of the natural world. 

Review Extracts
city:skinned (Vancouver, 2006)
'One of the most fabulously inventive site-specific works Vancouver has ever hosted, city:skinned is a must-see...' Georgia Straight, Vancouver Canada - July 2006

'city:skinned is less a performance than a hypnotic and beautifully functioning work of art. It is art that opens a passage into my own creativity and urges me to use that opening to perceive the world with keener and possibly kinder eyes. Transformation complete.' The Dance Current, Canada - Summer 2006

'One of Vancouver's stand-out arts experiences of 2006: city:skinned not only showed site-specific dance at its most inventive but gave Vancouverites a fresh glimpse of the place they call home.'
Georgia Straight, Vancouver Canada - December 2006

'Edgy movements in an edgy area.' The Province, Vancouver Canada - July 2006

'...truly imaginative...' Globe and Mail, Canada - July 2006

Production Highlights
Imbolc {in the belly}, 1-16 Feb 2008, Vancouver, Canada
sirenscrossing returns to Vancouver with its ground-breaking site specific performance work, to take audiences on a new adventure through the downtown core. Imbolc {in the belly} will create performances and installations at a sequence of downtown Vancouver locations, in an investigation of the human relationship to nature within the urban environment. Featuring both local and UK-based artists/performers, including Vancouver film maker Clancy Dennehy. Co-presented by The Dance Centre and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

palimpsest, Sept-Nov 2006 + Mar 2007, Creekside, London SE8
Site specific experience for audiences of 30 people at a time, commissioned by Laban and performed by vocational dance theatre students at Laban. palimpsest took audiences on a journey by foot, starting deep inside Laban's building, through a hidden CCTV control room, before moving outside. The performance flickered through a derelict urban environment layered with multiple histories and now on the cusp of redevelopment. It conjured a fleeting vision of the memories of a place...the politics, the poetry, the tidal memory of human lives that have passed through...tracing connections out into the larger urban landscape.
 
city:skinned vancouver, 5-15 July 2006, (22 performances)
Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver, Canada
Two performances nightly of a 90 minute piece for audiences of 20 people at a time. The audience encountered fragments of performance, sound, video and installation by journeying on foot and by bus through a series of locations in downtown Vancouver (the streets, a former funeral chapel, needle strewn alleyways, past warehouse apartments, a trendy city bar, a local designer's clothing store, a traditional Chinese garden) arriving finally at a large urban forest (Stanley Park) where the piece concluded. Requiring them to wear foam earplugs for part of the time altered the audience's aural experience. Integral to the work were workshops over 5 weeks with local people in association with Gallery Gachet and the Carnegie Centre, during which individuals were invited to profoundly influence the final shape of city:skinned. Presented by the Dancing on the Edge festival in association with the Vancouver Dance Centre, funded by Canada Council, British Council, Laban and local businesses.

Artist in Residence, January, April-June 2006
Vancouver Dance Centre, Canada
Audition/workshop for professional performers looking at choreographic engagement with urban environment in and around VDC. On-going workshops with local downtown community (see city:skinned). Creation/rehearsals for city:skinned in June. Funded by Laban + VDC.

biogenesis, February - December 2004, London, UK
Studio research looking at human bodily origins and links to other living forms. Research studio time provided by Laban.

memory dances, August/September 2003, Vancouver, Canada 
An urban research project in Vancouver, Canada that used video and movement to explore the human connection to nature and to city. Included an informal showing to an invited audience. Supported by the Vancouver Dance Centre, and funded by the Canada Council.

city:skinned, 5 to 29 June 2002, (19 performances)    
Commissioned by The Place, London UK 
An hour-long piece for an audience of 30 at a time, beginning with an installation/performance at The Place and then leading the audience into the streets and hidden corners of Kings Cross where they encountered performance, video and sound. The work travelled along streets, into a derelict building, past major excavations and roadworks, along the canal towpath, and into an ancient churchyard. Funded by London Arts, Argent St George, Kings Cross Partnership, Exel, Camden, British Waterways, London Continental Railways, Goldmark Publishing.

04 JERWOOD 10X8 STAIRWORKS, June 2001 (ten performances)  
The Wapping Project, London, UK 
A site specific piece for two performers, commissioned for the external staircase at The Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, with music by Walter Fabeck and lighting by Jo Joelson. The piece was viewed through two windows and doorways from inside the on site restaurant, and in part, involved aerial movement vocabulary using ropes and harnesses. Funded by The Wapping Project, with The Jerwood Foundation.

Coming soon
A new project in along the Thames in collaboration with the 2008 International Workshop Festival is currently in the works. The summer of 2008 will also see Carolyn Deby working with Viktoria Alarik (formerly Crowd Company) and Pia Nordin in Götenburg Sweden, on a new site specific piece - The Harbour Project - investigating that city's harbourfront.

sirenscrossing are currently seeking residency opportunities in other cities throughout Canada and Europe in order to further develop our psychogeographic, time-based choreographic work.

Permanent Staff
Carolyn Deby

Dancers
Pia Nordin, Cara Siu, Carolyn Chan, Catherine Anderson

Press Reviews Listed
city:skinned (Vancouver)
straight.com, 13 July.06
thedancecurrent.com, July.06
straight.com, 28 Dec.06
www.vancourier.com