Her Agency
 
Choreographer: Hannah Adams in collaboration with the performers
Performers: Marta Stepien, Greta Gauhe, Hannah Adams
Composer: Jess Ward
Performance as part of the Resolution Festival 2020 at The Place Theatre, London

In Her Agency three performers and a composer embark on a journey, exploring womanhood and female empowerment. They work with a consideration of bodily integrity and personal autonomy. The performance will highlight the importance of mutual support in the time of social isolation. Social, political and ecological systems are undergoing radical changes and the models we have used until now no longer reflect reality or hope. They therefore meet to support one another and to create a positive atmosphere that promotes the importance to unite. They will find themselves in unexpected complex situations, easing into unforeseen connections that demand instant responses.

Reviews:
Entering WomenWonder Collective’s immersive world, we’re greeted with ambient sound, soft undulations of the women already in action and comforting lighting. Three different fabrics envelope each member of the trio from which they struggle individually to free themselves, relying on a variety of canny moves. But they are most successful when entangled together they use one another’s bodies as ledges or levers. The theme of the work takes shape – how women’s struggle for autonomy is best aided by the support of others. Improvisation and an inventive use of voice keep an element of surprise in Her Agency but apart from some strikingly dramatic sculptural poses and heroine actions the movement stays on a mundane level of sameness.
- Josephine Leask 

WomenWonder Collective’s Her Agency is rather art installation-like in its explorative monotone. Slow writhing and entanglement of three dancers under fabric of contrasting textures conjure a parallel between female suppression and a sticky spider’s web; the victims are isolated and their escape routes complex. In a nod towards the #MeToo movement, the trapped emerge and unite through common vulnerability in a looping mass; intimate shared spaces are vacated and filled by padding hands and feet. It is a thoughtful piece and the improvisatory collaboration, albeit rather slow burning, conveys the importance of mutual female empowerment.
- Megan Edwards