Brigid | Alice Heyward

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 Times

• Sat 25 Oct, 7-8pm

• Sun 26 Oct, 5-6pm

View full Liveworks Program here

Content Warnings

This performance contains haze.

Talks & Sharings

Thurs 23 Oct, 5pm
Carriageworks Cafe

Delve into the conceptual framework of Brigid, a project by Alice Heyward and Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin, which brings questions and perspectives on myth, grief, imagination and embodied memory. Learn More.

Creative team

Lead Artist, Alice Heyward

Choreography, Alice Heyward and Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin

Performance, Alice Heyward, Oisín Monaghan/Ó Manacháin and Ivey Wawn (past project development included performer Leah Marojević)

Sound Composition and Performance, Gregor Kompar

Set, Alice Heyward & Gregor Kompar

Costumes, Chloe Hagger

Lighting, Andre Vanderwert

This project is presented by Performance Space as part of Liveworks 2025, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and development of this project was supported by HELLERAU, Gippsland Performing Arts Centre, Blue Ball Room, Kultursommer Wien.

Photography by Agustín Farias.