Interview with Alice Heyward

Introducing Alice Heyward

Alice Heyward, a dancer, choreographer, writer, editor and teacher from Naarm/Melbourne, is based in Berlin and works internationally. At Liveworks, she will present Brigid.

Brigid is a dance and sound performance inspired by the pre-Christian goddess Brigid, linked to the origins of the Bean Sí (Banshee) myth and her caoineadh (keening). Radiant goddess of fire and wellsprings, Brigid kindles creativity, heals the wounded, and guards the thresholds between life and death.

The performance interlaces sonic and visual patterns in rhythmic interplay, where dancing and keening summon wretched, buried, and imagined worlds. Incorporating and inventing Sean Nós (old-style) rituals, Brigid unfolds through immersion and suspension, reckoning with both the entanglement and the difference between grief and fear, stirring encounters with living and unlived memories, and the otherworldly.

"Performance is where my subjectivity is produced and reproduced, a practice of testing, repeating, and reshaping what I can be in relation to others." - Alice Heyward

What can audiences expect from your performance?

Strange sounds, shuffling, vibrations and beating... rumblings and collisions, textures of movement slipping between the seen and heard. Rhythmic bodies carrying moving stories, producing many different kinds of time in and between us all. The audience can expect extraordinary contributions from our team: dancing with and by the distinctive Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin on his first visit to Australia, very excellent local dancer Ivey Wawn, genius live sound composition by Gregor Kompar, stunning lighting by Andre Vanderwert, and gorgeous clothing by Chloe Hagger of Naarm’s unique smoking plum and the writing desk of glamour.

What is the role of performance in your life?

Performance is where my subjectivity is produced and reproduced, a practice of testing, repeating, and reshaping what I can be in relation to others. It is how my imagination takes form, how agency and flow emerge through embodiments. It’s where I connect, transform, and find myself moving, being moved in research and encounters with others.

What are you most looking forward to at Liveworks?

Dancing and singing with my friends; introducing dear friends and collaborators, Ivey and Oisín, through the project! The entire program is filled with exciting works. I want to see them all! I’m especially intrigued by Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains, as to how they might weave material and immaterial craft into choreography... And I am so excited for Rhiannon Newton's show, Long Sentences, I think its perspective is right up my alley...