Grief Takes the Stage: ‘Frankie’ explores the monster within at Australian Dance Biennale

Presented by Dancehouse and RISING as part of the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale, Frankie is a striking new solo performance by Berlin-based artist Martin Hansen that confronts grief through the unsettling and evocative figure of the monster.

Short for Frankenstein, Frankie positions grief as one of today’s most persistent taboos, an experience both deeply personal and widely shared, yet often left unspoken. Through a hybrid “dance-and-talk” format, Hansen uses the body as a flawed mediator, exploring emotion as something felt imperfectly, like touching texture through a glove. The performance unfolds as a series of fragments—movement, speech, sound and affect—creating a porous and intimate exchange between performer and audience.

At its core, Frankie resists easy resolution. Instead, it offers a poetic, humorous and unexpectedly tender space in which grief can be encountered without sentimentality or closure. Drawing on expanded choreography, literary analysis and performance lecture, the work positions dance as a site for thinking and questioning, embracing disorientation over catharsis.

Running from Wednesday 3 to Saturday 6 June at 6:30pm, with an additional 5pm performance on Sunday 7 June at the Sylvia Staehli Theatre, Frankie invites audiences to sit with what cannot yet be resolved, and to ask, with curiosity, which monsters we carry today.

Tickets start from $25. Book now.

Dancehouse ‘Frankie’ (2026), Martin Hansen. Photos by Evan Loxton