After Agatha – Amaara Raheem

After Agatha is a work-in-progress sharing by Front Studio Resident Amaara Raheem, made in collaboration with contemporary dance duo gemma+molly (Gemma Sattler and Molly McKenzie).

Part lecture, part ritual, part spell, all Dance, the work channels the Sick Witch — who emerged from Amaara's encounters with breast cancer, Past and Present, and from reading Johanna Hedva's 'Sick Woman Theory'. Refusing the promise of Cure, the Sick Witch asks what other forms of Knowledge become possible when bodies — human and other-than-human — are Damaged beyond Repair.

In this latest incarnation, the Sick Witch takes the form of St Agatha: patron saint of breast cancer, nurses, fire, catastrophe, and Survival. Moving between times, places, bodies, and cultures, After Agatha explores the great dancing deities of Fortune and Misfortune: the Immortal duality that shapes our Mortal life.

CREATED & PERFORMED by Amaara Raheem
PERFORMERS gemma+molly (Gemma Sattler & Molly McKenzie)
DATE & TIME Friday 3rd July, 7 pm
DURATION 45 minutes, followed by discussion
LOCATION Temperance Hall, Main Hall, 199 Napier Street, South Melbourne 
ACCESSIBILITY Temperance Hall's Main Hall is wheelchair accessible.

TICKETS Pay what you can.
Ticketing income funds video documentation for Temperance Hall's 2026 Front Studio Resident artists.

Amaara Raheem is a Temperance Hall Front Studio Resident for 2026. 

Temperance Hall's Front Studio Residency offers six independent artists an artist stipend and two months of exclusive, unrestricted access to the Front Studio at Temperance Hall. At the conclusion of their residencies, artists present a public showing of their work in development, and receive professional photographic documentation.

The 2026 Front Studio Residency has been supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, and private donors.

AMAARA RAHEEM is a Sri Lankan Australian dance-artist of multiple belongings. A member of the Curatorial Team at London Contemporary Dance School, she teaches on MA Dance (Participation, Communities, Activism). Her work nurtures dialogues between dance, writing and ecology; bodies of movement and text – its radical permeability and dependency. She is the current convenor of Dance Research Australia.

GEMMA+MOLLY (Gemma Sattler and Molly McKenzie) are a collaborative duo working as contemporary performance artists. Anchored by individual and shared experiences of dance, the duo’s practice relies on the necessary collaboration of their two bodies at work to conduct physical, durational and live installation research. gemma+molly’s work revolves around experiences of queerness and intimacy, endeavouring to contribute to the deep strong lineages of queer art.

Image courtesy of the artist Amaara Raheem