I fatefully connected in 2021 with Lucy Peach. Over the following year our connection grew and was consolidated via our Hot House Company residency at All Saints College in 2022.

We wove Lucy’s approach to period preaching - her unique style of ‘edutainment’ including music and heartfelt, frank dialogue - together with my passions for empowering bodies and communities through dance.

Using the framework of the 4 phases of the menstrual cycle we ignited an essential conversation across the entire school community.

We offered a variety of creative learning styles, engaging the full Year 5-6 cohort and students from Year 7 to 12 across subject areas of dance, music and health. This culminated with an all ages, all genders, cycle seasons flashmob on the central playground.

Our residency led to ongoing collaboration and expansion of both mine and Lucy’s professional approach. I delight in the ongoing growth and diverse contexts in which this powerful work is shared.

In 2022 I taught wellbeing classes as part of Ausdance's Dance in Country Week. The program supports high school aged students from regional and remote areas to visit Boorloo (Perth) in the July school holidays. Over two weeks they are exposed to a range of dance styles and ideas. Workshops and classes run intensively everyday, culminating in an opportunity for each school to perform.

2022 Dance at Country Week was produced by Rachel Arianne Ogle on behalf of Ausdance. My wellbeing workshops included body listening, improvisation, energy mapping and learning about periods through spontaneous and memorable choreography - one groove move for each of the key details in the menstrual cycle. This collectively created dance captured the change of energy, emotion and distinct power found in each of the 4 menstrual phases.

School workshops were central to my 2023 Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Ōtepoti, Aoetearoa. While most of my workshops focused on resting / wrestling with fatigue and climate crisis, St Hilda's Collegiate School specifically requested that I teach my menstrual health dance workshop to their Year 12 Health classes.

Activities included:
-body listening / check-ins
-movement medicine warm up
-contagious groove (dialling energy up and down)
-mapping personal energy patterns
-detailed learning via hormonal graphs
-menstrual cycle flash dance
-detailed discussion of menstrual health conditions and social issues around periods

The St Hilda's students were distinctly engaged, joyous and appreciative of the workshop's information and playful style. It was wonderful to witness their learning and realisations.

Special thanks to staff Rachel McMillan and Cadyne Geary who warmly welcomed me and my mahi (work) into the school.

Thanks to Caroline Plummer's family and the University of Otago, Dunedin.

As part of my 2023 Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance, I offered a public workshop titled CYCLES OF REST AND ENERGY. It was hosted in Ōtepoti's unique arts and community venue Te Whare O Rukutia.

13 menstruators and 1 elder.
Conversation.
Care.
Clear intentions.
Cyclical learning.
Letters to ourselves.
A silent walk together through city streets.
A shared song to close - Te Aroha the beautiful Maori waiata.

Below is a reflection I wrote about this event in the wider context of my 2023 Fellowship:

In my personal journey of dancing with rest as a tool for healing from chronic fatigue, the symptoms of my endometriosis gradually disappeared. Menstrual health tracking and awareness is therefore an essential and growing aspect of my research, inspired also by my collaboration with Lucy Peach (Australian ‘period preacher’ / folk musician).

Not all women have periods and not everyone with a period is woman.

The biological details of the menstrual cycle reveal powerful prompts for tuning in, deeply and generously, to how our hormones bring shifts of energy over the course of a month (give or take).

We can empower ourselves and each other by...
- celebrating the different qualities and ‘powers’ that come with different moments in the menstrual cycle
- honouring the huge range in how we feel and what we can realistically do, without judgement.
- figuring out what we need and the best use of our energy each day, as we inhabit various and constantly changing textures of emotion.
These are, contrary to popular belief, quite predictable the better we know and embody our own unique cycles.

It is a radical, essential act to embrace menstruation wholeheartedly. To know it, talk about it, own it and realise how incredible it is... to have inside the body an ability for life making and a cyclical pattern of power and creativity that must not be shamed, dismissed or underestimated.

I am grateful to the group of 14 who attended this event. The room was full of womb wisdom. Conversation opened up to a powerful and insightful level of sharing. It was a vulnerable and heartfelt event, offering ripples of learning that are sure to radiate through us all and out to other menstruators in our lives.

Special thanks to event partners Hekate and Dunedin Fringe Festival, in particular Isobella D'Aiello and Kate Schrader.