Politics & Power Quote by Siobhan Davies

Siobhan Davies makes collaboration sound like a logistics problem, then quietly reveals it as a worldview. The line is built on the soft power of invitation: “ask artists from abroad to come in too” frames international exchange not as competition or cultural rescue, but as a choice a community can make. “Come in” is domestic language, almost architectural. It imagines the local scene as a house with doors worth opening, not a fortress to defend or a brand to export.

The engine of the quote is that modest phrase “mixing and matching of skills.” It dodges the romantic mystique often pasted onto artistic “fusion” and instead treats creativity like craft: techniques, habits, disciplines you can trade, borrow, test. That’s a dancer’s sensibility. Dance is literally learned through bodies in proximity - watching, repeating, adapting - so Davies’ politics of exchange is grounded in how art actually travels: person to person, rehearsal to rehearsal, not through abstract proclamations about “diversity.”

The subtext is a pushback against insularity and cultural complacency. By naming “Europe, America and here,” she acknowledges hierarchies without bowing to them. “Here” is asserted as an equal node, not a periphery craving validation. The final promise, “widen our world,” isn’t a lofty slogan; it’s an argument about scale. Bring in outside artists and you don’t just add new steps - you expand what your scene believes is possible, and who gets to belong in it.