What would sound look like if it could be seen?"

British choreographer Siobhan Davies, working collaboratively with composer Andy Pink and visual artist David Ward, turned this enigmatic question into a mysterious dance called Bird Song. Davies has been a major movement innovator in Great Britain since the 1970s. She's created challenging experimental work for her nine-person troupe, as well as for such establishment giants as the Royal Ballet. She's even been awarded the Queen's Honours of a Commander of the British Empire. What's really surprising is that her appearance here as part of the Live Arts Festival will be her U.S. premiere.

The sweet, thin line holding Bird Song together is the shrill cry of the Australian Pied Butcher Bird. The bird makes a sound that, as the choreographer described it in an interview with the British online magazine Article 19, "is totally and obviously inhuman and that energized me." Composer Andy Pink embedded this natural sound in a music collage of competing and unrelated sounds (jackhammers and train brakes, among other industrial noises) that allowed Davies to respond to "sounds that would shock me in some form. I don't mean shock in an antagonistic way but drive me out of the normal." Meanwhile visual artist David Ward added his nature-based artist's eye.

Davies works not only with movement and sound, she likes to tinker with the actual environment of her dances. She felt she "knew something about the proscenium arch, having worked in it for 30 years." So the question left was what more could be done. What she came up with for Bird Song was having the audience on four sides looking down on the dancers, which means the performers are in what she has called "a holding area amongst the audience." The light source is directly overhead, animating the floor with shifting landscapes and colors.

Some of the movement becomes what one critic called "choreographic ventriloquy" as dancers respond to the sound collage. But another of Davies' movement hallmarks is to leave space in her work for each performer to listen and improvise to what he or she hears during the moment. If all this sounds fascinating, it should. Altogether over 100 sources of sound, light and music will be used. But I'll bet that when you see it, you'll not only be as hypnotized as the British viewers, but you'll understand perfectly why that one birdsong holds the whole together.

Bird Song, Sept. 14-17, 8 p.m., $20, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., 50 min.