Reviewing the premiere of The Passion of Mary Magdalene at the Barbican in March 2026, The Guardian commented that it would “lend itself to being danced”. Tansy Davies’ music, which cross-fertilizes the rhythmic impulses funk, electropop, with a brittle modernist sensibility, has been a source of inspiration for several choreographic treatments.
In 2023 Davies’ Dark Ground for solo percussion – an 8-minute work inspired by Xenakis and Prince by turns – was performed by Konstantyn Napolov as part of Hold Your Ground – Summer Snow at the Boilerhouse Foundation in The Hague – a spectacle that unfolded over three successive evenings. The three-phase performance, combing eurythmic dance, language, play and music, was directed by Saskia Mees and Laura Vink. It brought together the dancers of the Boilerhouse Foundation, as well as writer Taco Sorgdrager, actor Louis van Rijt in an exploration of inhuman and human desires for balance. In Dark Ground everything grows up from a root - the Pedal Bass Drum - a dead sound, cycling in a simple yet deceptive 7/8. Watch Napolov perform the work here.
In 2021the Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt created Hojotojo! (There’s no place like home), for the CODA international dance festival in Oslo, a project co-produced by the Dansens Hus supported by the Cultural Council and the Norwegian Composers’ Fund. The 60-minute work drew on music by Davies and composer Rolf Wallin, using recordings of her string orchestra work Dune of Footprints and ensemble work Antenoux, which digitally slowed down and reworked into something entirely new for the production. Watch a clip from Hojotojo! here.
A collaboration with the work of visual artist Vanessa Baird – another characteristically interdisciplinary project for Davies – the work riffs on a series of female archetypes, which are frequent touchstones in the work of Baird and the choreographer Ingun Bjørnsgaard. They are both artists who use their work “to shout” – suggesting the war-cry of the Valkyries that gives the work its title. This cry, along with the dancing body, manifests a series of challenges preconceived and frozen notions associated with femininity, pivoting between the massive and the intimate. The result is a work that has tragicomic and whimsical elements, as well as a raw and ancient theatrical power.
Davies’ previously collaborated with Bjørnsgaard, Wallin, and the CODA festival in 2011 for Omega and the Deer. Its debut was followed by a German tour and a further international revival in 2013/14, appearing in venues in France and Norway. Omega and the Deer, like Hojotojo!, explores another archetype – the dark of the forest. The characters on their journey become lost and disoriented, finally haunted by their own shadows. Watch an excerpt from Omega and the Deer here.
The piece examines human beings’ complex self-perception, capacity for sociability, and sense of belonging; its existential aspect is underlined by references to the work of Edvard Munch. The sound world provided by Davies was created from gritty remixes and paired down rewrites of instrumental tracks from Davies’ 2002 album Troubairitz, including grind show (electric) – a Goya-inspired work backlit by haunting electronics – and the jerky, jazzy, percussive frenzy of salt box.
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