As both visual artist and dance maker, I was interested to know why cross art form dialogue has become such a key part of Siobhan’s artistic output.

We met for an hour one crisp October morning in Siobhan’s glass fronted office in South London. I talked with Siobhan about how curating had become an extension of her own choreographic trajectory, why collaboration is important to her and how all of this relates to her personal campaign to promote dance thinking as a generator for ideas in other art forms. Talking with at times her eyes shut, hands floating back and forth, Siobhan gently uncovered the words to give me an insight that I share with you here.

I practice, I arrange and I find out.

Olivia Punnett’s work takes the form of assemblage: constellations of objects arranged in a considered visual hierarchy with evident picture making sensibilities. The component parts remain autonomous and able to be moved into different positions at any time, hinting at the inevitable reconfiguration that living brings with it. They tend to be ubiquitous British items, often clearly from a time past, bearing hall marks of fashions that have long since faded: ornamental patio air bricks, decorative bamboo plant stands, garden items that all the neighbours once had. One of these objects is typically a projection device, employed to open up a momentary window into an alternative place and time. The context is almost always a setting used for living or working.

Jealousy, a collaboration between dance and sculpture, is showing at The Print Room, Notting Hill It is a devised dance work, lead by sculptor and installation artist Laurence Kavanagh with the collaboration of four choreographers: James Cousins, Herbert Essakow, Daniel Hay Gordon, and Morgan Runacre –Temple. The text for the devised work is novel La Jalousie by Nouveau Roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet.

I met with Laurence halfway through rehearsals on the invitation of producer Andre Portasio, ex English National Ballet dancer, and my long suffering ballet teacher. Here I share insights gained from our conversation as to where this collaboration fits amongst the many encounters that dance is currently having with other disciplines. The project, funded The Print Room, is also an encouraging example of philanthropy which should be championed in this austere time for the arts.

I came across Peter Lanyon's paintings in 2000. At the time I had a conundrum, I was looking at a career in the visual arts but my natural affinity was with moving in the world, not looking at it. My only arena for this, was ballet and I was awful at it, my teacher often having to disguise her horror at my, imprecise, joy in throwing myself around and defiance in not valuing tidying this up. There were no release based contemporary dance classes on the Isle of Wight where I had grown up or things may have been different. I spent a lot of time outdoors, on the beach and I wanted to paint how it felt to physically be in landscape, rather than what it looked like, viewed from a fixed point, complete with my own psychological interior landscapes. Peter Lanyon did just that and I felt such an affinity with him that at 18, I made a decision. I moved 300 miles away from home, eager to experience what he had, paint what he had, and immerse myself in his homeland, Cornwall.

11 October 2010.

I visited Siobhan and dancers Annie Lok, Charlie Morrisey, Lindsey Butcher and Andrea Buckley at the beginning of week seven in their 10-week rehearsal period. As I arrived on that Monday morning and was lead up to the Roof Studio by Siobhan I was immediately struck by the sense of calm that I found inside. The four dancers had brought with them various combinations of costume to suggest to EV Crowe, the Playwright, later that afternoon and the shopping trip to get them had been, by all accounts, something like a family outing. The atmosphere was one of focused hard work and delight in working together.