One of the highlights of this year’s Bounce Festival is Tales from the Mother – a much anticipated collaboration between two of NI’s most celebrated dancers, Helen Hall and Linda Fearon.
This beautiful expressive piece, which will be performed at the Crescent Arts Centre on October 3, is a conversation through dance about their experiences of motherhood.
The 45 minute dance will include immersive and uplifting soundscapes produced by composer Isaac Gibson, who has brilliantly captured the intimate dialogue between these two highly gifted artists.
The idea for Tales from the Mother began a couple of years ago when University of Atypical invited Helen and Linda to be part of a new commission funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The proposal was successful.
The pair had worked together as part of Luminous Soul, a dance group for disabled people and had already discussed doing a dance piece around motherhood but it had been shelved during Covid 19.
They began by having in-depth conversations about the different aspects of motherhood, its highs and lows.
Helen said: “At its core are a series of conversations we have with each other about motherhood, that are heard in the soundscape. It is the chats that brought us together, so we also bring these into the piece, and invite the audience to be present in this sharing.”
Both women have two children, a boy and a girl but Linda experienced the devastating loss of her older child, Patrick, who died two and half years ago.
Linda said: “I thought long and hard about including Patrick’s passing in the piece, but he made me a mother, he is my firstborn so I decided to try to honour him in the best way I can. Some of the conversations have been emotional, and some of the movements will be too.
“I suppose I’d like to show that my love for him is still very much part of my life and always will be. But I didn’t want the whole piece to be about my loss, we both wanted to be about motherhood and all its complexities “
Helen said they couldn’t wait to perform this piece and are glad that it is being premiered as part of Bounce.
“We both respect each other as artists, so it is an exciting opportunity to get to work on this together. The Bounce festival has always been a very supportive festival for me personally. It provides a safe and supportive platform to showcase work, and I have presented a number of works at Bounce over the years.
“I feel it is also a very necessary festival, both for the artists it showcases and also the audiences that attend. It is a place that really champions the work of professional disabled artists,” she added.
For Linda, Bounce means everything as an artist and performer. “I have been very fortunate to have been part of the Bounce festival every year since the very beginning, either on stage or behind it.
The festival has had a huge impact on me as a performer and has given me the confidence and support to push the boundaries as a dancer,” she said.
Tickets and full schedule for Bounce are available at: universityofatypical.org/bounce/
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