National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) will showcase the brand-new show, INGRESS, journeying into a woman’s deep desire to live autonomously, courageously; armed with her spirit, curiosity and mortality. Showing 11 – 15 October as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival, INGRESS is a solo work performed and directed by long-time CIRCA ensemble member Bridie Hooper, developed in collaboration with acclaimed Australian fashion designer, Gail Sorronda.
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, NICA introduced a one-year residency and mentorship program that assists circus and physical theatre artists to test and research ideas and create and present work. Bridie was awarded the 2022 residency and has since perfected, what will be, the debut of INGRESS.
In INGRESS, Bridie uses a stunning hybrid of interdisciplinary talents to explore a woman’s fierce effort to untether herself from both the intrinsic and extrinsic constraints inhibiting her existence, in an astonishing intersection of circus, theatre and movement.
Bridie explains: “I wanted to create a work that explores a woman’s ambition to repossess her life through considering and celebrating her impermanence. INGRESS is a dark, funny, physical journey into the mind of a woman as she desperately and defiantly attempts to unburden herself from the real and imagined limitations of her being.”
Led by Bridie’s original vision, the show is a visual and conceptual collision of provocations regarding the female archetype, the self and the psyche, The show has been developed in collaboration with Gail Sorronda, whose unique monochrome designs have attracted the likes of Dolce & Gabbana, who cherry-picked her label to be stocked in the Spiga2 store in Milan. Gail was also named “one to watch” by Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld.
Bridie said: “I immediately felt there was a symmetry between Gail’s explorations of the divine feminine and duality, and my own interest in spirit, myth and the psyche. I was inspired by the intersection of mythic, gothic, masculine and feminine, all with this undercurrent of divinity that can be self-determined, so I reached out and shared my project and ideas with Gail, and was totally thrilled she was interested.”
INGRESS was inspired by the Greek myth of Psyche. Traded for marriage to a God, then condemned for her curiosity, Psyche was exiled to wander the earth and complete tasks set by the Gods. On completing their trials, she was granted immortality – a ‘golden deathlessness’, more imposition than gift.
