When I was young, she taught me to dance. Now, through life’s pummelling, I am dancing still.

She is God, the Universe, the sisterhood, the everywoman; she is the speaker of truth, the gift of sight, the light in the darkness. Actually, it doesn’t really matter who she is. What matters is that she took your hand and guided you out of those deep, murky waters that had threatened to drown you.

This is a work about resilience, about strength, and about the female bonds that hold us and lead us ever forwards, onwards, upwards. With choreography and movement direction by Nobbs Suzuki Praxis (NSP) practitioner, Alicia Melonie Jones, and theatre and dance artist, Noa Rotem, Francesca Giselle continues Little Dove’s exploration of love and connection as the root system of our being, producing a powerful, transcendent dance theatre work that is at once both deeply personal and yet wholly universal.

Francesca Giselle began life as a creative development through Canberra Theatre Centre’s New Works program in 2021, and our deep gratitude goes to the performers who helped to realise the initial form of the work during this development - Eliza Sanders, Bambi Valentine, Natsuko Yonezawa and Ketura Budd. With the generous support of ArtsACT and Canberra Theatre Centre, a second creative development of this work was undertaken in January 2023, in which the choreographic aspects of the work were expanded and solidified.

Little Dove dedicates this work to all those who have suffered physical, emotional, mental and/or financial abuse at the hands of others, and give thanks to those individuals and organisations that are working to end the insidious epidemic of intimate partner violence.