DIY Nights - The Liberation of Hecate

About the Night:

‘The Liberation of Hecate’ is a feminist butoh performance which explores the pressures imposed upon contemporary womxn. The work begins with the idea of the triplet that accompanies the image of Hecate, an image of wholeness represented in three unified parts. These parts begin to break down and unravel as the work moves through completeness, multiplicity, fracturing, and stillness. Audiences encounter statues, creatures, and wild gardens growing up from amongst rubble in a piece that fluctuates between extreme slowness and sudden, eerie movement. Resistance and liberation come from defiant stillness, that the way to escape expectation is to reduce as much as possible.

Content Note: Some images may be disturbing for young children, recommended 14+

About the Artist:

Iris (Alice Baldock, she/her) trained in ballet and contemporary dance since the age of three, and in 2021 started to practice butoh in Tokyo with that late Nakajima Natsu, and now studies under internationally-acclaimed dancer Vangeline. Since 2021, her practice has shifted to incorporate butoh.

In Japan, she appeared in Nakajima Natsu’s Yume no yume, oku no oku, nokori no hi (April 2022), and performed a solo piece, ‘Mizu/ Water’ in butoh company Mutekisha’s Kokkyounaki Karada (July 2022). She is part of the performance art collective BEIMA in Oxford, who perform durational and site-specific work, and a member of the London Butoh Dance Company, whose most recent performance ‘iFlash: Anatomy Not Found’, interrogates human relationships to technology. Iris performed the solo-piece 'Fruit of My Woman' in Oxford (Modern Art Oxford), New York (Queer Butoh Festival 2025), and Belgium (Sombre Compagnie) in 2025. Her current work 'The Liberation of Hecate', will tour in 2026.

Accessibility:

Please note, we are on the second floor of a warehouse building, accessed by a staircase only. We regret that we cannot currently adequately support wheelchair users and those for whom stairs are a barrier.

We are committed to removing other barriers to access. If you would like to talk to us about your access needs, please contact: frances@chisenhaledancespace.co.uk. Read more about our commitments to anti-ableism as part of our Artist Community Culture Document

About DIY Nights:

DIY Nights are CDS’s performance programme created in the spirit of grassroots, low stakes performance making and sharing.

Anyone can apply to run a DIY Night, and CDS programmes them on a rolling basis for artists looking for a way to try out new ideas with low financial risk.

If you are interested in running your own night, you can learn more and apply here.