“Imbue my soul with the spirit you wish for me to embody”
Credits: Co-Director, Cinematographer, Editor
Created by Well of Wills, this short dance film was developed with a group of interdisciplinary artists and novice performers over the course of a weekend-long performance workshop at Arts on Site, November 2019. The workshop centered the mythological Jewish heroine, Judith, who seduces and beheads her enemy to save her people from annihilation. Nessa Norich (Theatre Director) led a research & development process to investigate the moments that could have led a widow to commit this liberatory act of violence. As a collective, we imagined and embodied the resources that would have empowered us to act as Judith did in order to finally put an end to oppression: Rage, Seduction, Faith, Prayer and Ritual. We conceived this choreography as an invocation composed of the rage, seduction, prayer, and ancestral trauma excavated in this research. In this ensemble of female-identifying and non-binary warriors we see a prismatic portrait of a woman warrior encompassing the voice-less rage of her matrilineal ancestors. Judith shows how pain can be transmuted into collective action in the name of radical change.