murmuration - commissioned by the The English Folk Dance and Song Society, was exhibited in the foyer of Cecil Sharp House from June 9th until August 12th 2015 and is based around a discovery of the dance tune Song for the Starling within the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, as well as some fascinating old depictions of dance steps to morris and country dances.
The exhibition used various platforms to explore the differences and similarities of ‘social movement’ between the murmurations of starlings and English country dances. These included photography, video, building a large-scale working praxinsoscope, and collaborating with dancer Laurel Swift, as well as musicians Rebekah Robertson and Pete Thomas to create a performance of the original Song for the Starling, to the tempo set by video footage of the starlings themselves performing their daily murmuration in Brighton.
