Multi-disciplinary performance company Northern Rascals are bringing their powerful new dance-theatre show, REVIVING HER, to Halifax’s Square Chapel Arts Centre this July. The company impressively combines theatre and dance to explore themes of safety, identity and empowerment in Northern women. Told in the brave, fearless and honest voices of young women from Yorkshire, REVIVING HER is a call to arms; a battle cry for a world where women can raise their authentic selves to a place of love, acceptance, and strength.
The audience are introduced to six women, who find themselves in an unknown location. Lost and confused, they try to understand their surroundings, but something has changed. What was familiar now feels strange. They embark on a reflective and intimate journey, visiting their past, present and future selves. Through the medium of dance-theatre, Northern Rascals aims to explore what it means to be a woman in today’s society.
REVIVING HER came to fruition during the pandemic in 2021, when six female artists came together with the intention of creating an empowering production for women. After three years of self and group reflection, Northern Rascals are showcasing their work for audiences to witness the journey many women take throughout life. Created from Co-Artistic Director Anna Holmes’ personal experiences, the project works through the layers of the generational and societal trauma of living under the male gaze. REVIVING HER aims for its audiences and participants to reconnect with their authentic self by reflecting on their past and present.
The show is made in collaboration with a strong artistic team, all of whom are 30 and under. Northern Rascals are committed to championing young artists, to show that age is not an indicator of quality art. The show includes dance, theatre and spoken word (the writing by Anna Holmes has been mentored by acclaimed writer and spoken word artist, Joelle Taylor). There is a large-scale set and an original score composed by Wilfred Kimber.
Writer and Co-Director Anna Holmes comments, As the writer and Co-Director of REVIVING HER – and as a young woman myself, the development of this new show has become an outpouring of my own experiences of what it means to be a woman today. Along with my female collaborators, community and personal inner circle, we’ve shifted through layers of conditioning, and dissected our own behaviours to find out why we women in the way we do. REVIVING HER is a timely, vital ode to the tribulations of young womanhood. It is the calm, the kind, the quiet, the cave, the vulnerable, the guarded, the smile, the tears, the frown, the hand on heart, hand on head, hand on waist, the fear, the failure, the small space, the female impersonator, the anger suppressed, the anger released, the wild, the violent, the isolated and the beautiful, beautiful coming together.
