Brigid

Brigid is an exploration of grief, gender, horror, and the supernatural. This sonic dance is rooted in my curiosity about my Irish heritage, evolving through body-based research, drawing inspiration from the pre-Christian goddess Brigid. The enigmatic Banshee figure develops from Brigid, credited with the origin of keening, a vocal lament for the departed.

The essence of Brigid lies in its reimagining of death and gender, encapsulated within the multifaceted nature of the Banshee who screams before death. A spectral harbinger of death, the Banshee mythology becomes a lens through which to address colonial violence, ancestry and mortality, transcending into a reflection on collective sorrow, the continuum of life and death, and connections between all things and beings.

Central are vocal expressions that induce physical transformations, and visa versa. The 'female mouth' emerges as a symbolic representation—a collective entity transcending individual experiences across time and space. It becomes a conduit for learning and preserving colonised languages, incorporating traditional Gaelic songs to confront and grapple with white-settler positionality in Australia. Brigid weaves a tapestry connecting the living and the dead, the past and the present, in a visceral exploration of grief, mourning and foreshadowing.

Against a global backdrop of horror and sorrow, Brigid challenges conventional notions of the horror genre, viewing horror as a dynamic container for affect. The project questions the relationship between sound, vocality, the formation of images, and the horror genre itself, which historicises the unknown as threatening. Movement and sound are rather tools to convey the complexities of gender, death, the supernatural, and relationships to folklore.

The term 'banshee,' derived from the Irish 'bean sí,' meaning 'woman of the fairy mound,' ties into mythologically significant tumuli scattered across the Irish countryside. 'Brigid' seeks to reimagine the banshee in the material context of the ancient soils and flora where it is developed in residencies, creating a synthesis between the figure and spirit of the banshee with local environment. The banshee is not only 'of' the land but her cries are also likened to owl, fox and deer cries, prompting an exploration of performative embodiments and transformation between local birds and creatures.

Practices such as traditional Sean-nós dancing, Irish laments, and embodiments of non-human movement and sound develop material. We foster new connections through embodiment and relation to culminate in a visual chorus in this exploration of grief, gender, horror, and the supernatural—a visual and auditory immersion that defines Brigid