Brigid
by Alice Heyward with Oisín Ó Manacháin
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Brigid (2025), by Alice Heyward. Photo by Agustín Farías.
— Keening for buried, wretched, and imagined worlds
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.
Brigid unfolds through immersion and suspension. Interlaced with sonic and visual patterns, Alice Heyward and Oisín Monaghan / Oisín Ó Manacháin’s choreography reckons with the entanglement of grief and fear, stirring otherworldly encounters by incorporating and inventing Sean Nós (old-style) rituals.
Choreography: Alice Heyward and Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin
Performers: Alice Heyward, Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin and Oonagh Slater
Sound Composition and Performance: Gregor Kompar
Set Design: Alice Heyward & Gregor Kompar
Costumes: Chloe Hagger
Lighting: House of Vnholy
This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and its development was supported by HELLERAU, Gippsland Performing Arts Centre, Blue Ball Room, and Kultursommer Wien.
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Alice Heyward, a dancer, choreographer, writer, editor and teacher from Naarm/Melbourne, is based in Berlin and works internationally. Her practice unfolds as author, co-author and interpreter across diverse contexts, pursuing the embodied poetics of connection and transformation.
Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin, a dance artist and visual performer from Mayo, Ireland/NYC, based in Vienna, began their training at the Martha Graham School and has collaborated widely. Their practice contemplates interior bodily shifts through sounding impulses that reimagine ways of seeing, being and shaping the body’s landscape.
Gregor is a composer and musician whose work explores minimalist songwriting and textural storytelling. As a solo artist, he produces genre-bending, layered tracks from a palette of electronic and acoustic instruments and voices. This sensibility translates into his work for dance and experimental performance. Approaching composition for movement with the same ear for narrative and atmosphere, he creates scores that function as an active character in the performance.
Chloe Hagger is an artist from Melbourne. she is the editor and publisher of Cupboard magazine. Her artistic practice encompasses visual art and fashion making.
House of Vnholy (Matthew Adey) is an experimental multi-discipline artist and designer based in Adelaide/Melbourne. HØV creates visual and immersive experiences with light, object and body through live performance and large scale installation. HØV investigates the spectacle of the visual image and the transcendence and meditation of time and space, subverting the contemporary spectacle through new media and technology. Adey has worked extensively across contemporary dance, arts festivals, live music and theatre over the past 14 years both in Australia and abroad, notably with Dark Mofo, RISING, Soft Centre, Australian Dance Theatre, Restless Dance Theatre, Amrita Hepi, Phillip Adams, Brooke Stamp, Antony Hamilton, Melanie Lane and Atlanta Eke.
Oonagh Slater (she/her) is an artist and dancer. Deeply rooted in the body, her practice explores memory, lineage, landscape, and intimacy. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Contemporary Dance) in 2017. As a dancer she has worked with choreographers including Phoebe Robinson, Sandra Parker and Jude Walton.
