Presented by Dancehouse and RISING as part of the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale

— Grief is a monster! A new dance work from Berlin based performer Martin Hansen that uses the body as flawed mediator. 

Frankie is a new solo performance work by Martin Hansen that explores grief through the figure of the monster. Shorthand for Frankenstein, Frankie situates grief as one of today’s most persistent taboos, a shared yet hidden experience shaped by lost futures. Like feeling the texture of something through a glove, Frankie frames the body as the imperfect and troubled mediator of emotions. Hansen acts as a conduit for a tentative offering, an unfolding of figures and fragments of dance, utterance, affect and tune.

At its core, Frankie proposes grief as one of the defining monsters of our time and rather than offering resolution, the work creates a poetic, humorous, and strangely tender space in which audiences can encounter grief without sentimentality, diagnosis, or closure. Rather than psychological catharsis, Frankie frames it as disorientation. Guided by the principle of digression, Frankie uses a hybrid “dance-and-talk” format in which dancing and speaking unfold through live performance, creating a porous relationship between performer and audience.

Frankie intersects expanded choreography, literary analysis and performance lecture, positioning dance as a site of thinking, critique, and imagination. In a time when many feel the solid melt once again into air, Frankie commits to dance as a space to hold what cannot yet be resolved — and to ask, with curiosity: which monsters are dancing today?

Choreography and Performance Martin Hansen
Composition James Rushford
Costume and Visual Identity Evan Loxton
Lighting Design Matt Adey
Dramaturgical Assistance Sarah Aiken
Co-producers Martin Hansen, Tanzfabrik Berlin and Dancehouse

Co-produced by Martin Hansen, Tanzfabrik Berlin and Dancehouse. Initially developed as part of Temperance Hall’s Temper commissioning program. Research supported by the Berliner Senate through the Tanzpraxis stipend. Frankie is part of the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale, curated and hosted by RISING.