Louise Siddons —
Artist, Writer, Caller, Historian, Choreographer, curator.
The movements we make leave marks that carry meaning and memory — whether it’s the trace of an etching needle over a printing plate, the worn-down varnish removed by dozens of dancers slip-circling across a wooden floor, or a groove carved in the earth by thousands of feet over centuries.
I am especially interested in how we find and recuperate queer-bodied spaces inside the everyday and the habitual — in between the serialised and repetitive actions that generate footpaths, folk dances, printed images, animation, archives, and more.
Across media, I create my work in the context of the ordinary, the vernacular, and the iterative rather than the spectacular. Hand-crafted, digitally informed, historically rooted, and movement-based, my work celebrates the queerness of the familiar through individual and collective forms of expression.
Caller
Researcher
Artist
Above everything, I believe that we should do our best to create joy for each other. As a folk dance caller, I have the incredible privilege of watching people discover the fun of connecting un-self-consciously with one another in the moment, facilitated by incredible, community-driven live music.
Social folk dance is a broad umbrella, and I love all of it, from the exuberant galloping of an English ceilidh to the studied seriousness of dancers who intend to create something beautiful.
I am an internationally recognised award-winning multidisciplinary researcher whose practice-based work engages communities with hidden histories as a spur for participatory cultural innovation.
I have been supported by grants from the British Library, the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the Country Dance and Song Society, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and others. I am the author of two monographs as well as numerous exhibition catalogues and invited book chapters, and my research has been published in journals such as American Art, Frontiers, Panorama, the British Art Journal, and African American Review.
My practice-based work connects the joyful embodiment of dance with the critical awareness of research and analysis. After twenty years as an art historian, I have returned with renewed enthusiasm to art-making as a tool for collective experimentation and discovery.
I am committed to social practice, which means I work with communities to create shared and collaborative artworks, and I see this as an extension of my choreographic and calling work in the dance world. I am also a printmaker, and I find the quiet solitude of that practice a welcome counterpoint to my socially engaged work.