Billy Cowie Lecture October 12th

Billy Cowie is an artist primarily known as a choreographer of dance and theatre performance. His works are shown under separate subtitles, the overall titling being ''Archaic Dance''. Cowie's introduction describes how he was formally in a band and his desire to involve dances into music entertainment evenings. "Hop on Pops" was an example of a choreographed dance to be performed in bars and clubs alongside bands. Restraints of this system were the small spaces to work with and that the audience were often present with intention to experience music, not dance. To overcome the latter Cowie used humor as a way to connect to the viewer.

"Drool and Drivel They Care" is a subtitle to some of his works involving representations of Margaret Thatcher. Parts of her speeches are used as audio to accompany the movements. Cowie describes how the human voice can become musical when sections of a phrase or sentence are repeated. "Moaning Minnies" is a title to a piece within this subtitle. It shows two dancers dressed as the former prime minister in a comical interaction between one another. One drops litter whilst the other picks it up and then visa versa. This relates to an apparently true story where Margaret Thatcher had someone scatter rubbish around a park so that she could be filmed picking it up.

Cowie enjoys live performance because of the essence of the dancers being present, but understands that the details, for example facial expressions, of each dancer cannot be fully appreciated unless film is used. The artist explains how the control over what the audience is viewing is important to him. "Motion Control" is described as almost a duet between camera and solo dancer. The piece gives the impression that the camera has some kind of existence, that it is alive. Cowie has linked sounds to the movements of the camera, these are ambiguous so as to leave the interpretation of the 'thing' behind the camera to the viewer.

The experience of a live dance was missing from these works, this lack of reality inspired the artist to use 3D installation film. In this series Cowie encourages the viewer to use 3D glasses, "Swing low Sweet Cheerio" is an example of this. The piece shows three women apparently in separate doorways as though forever trapped in this existence. They pass their time by dancing and chatting to one another.

It is evident in Cowie's work that the artist wants to bring a certain reality to his work as though the choreographed pieces are in a natural existence, rather than something that starts and finishes on a stage. Whether that is by putting a dance into a social or more usual happening, shown in the bar and club performances. Or by using camera shots to make the viewer feel they are seeing the situation through the eyes of a creature or machine, as exampled in "Motion Control". His installation works of recent try to incorporate the essence of the dancers in the same space as viewer with allusions that are easily created using film, still keeping to the idea that these scenarios are authentic in reality.