When Emma Sandall read Sheila Heti’s provocative, best-selling 2018 novel Motherhood, about a female writer in her late 30s deciding not to have children, she says, “It spoke to me deeply.”

“I loved [Heti’s] generosity, because she’s very raw in it. She talks about sexual desire, jealousy, ambivalence. She talks about so many aspects of life in such a raw and honest way. And I was like, ‘Ah, that’s the only way to be; then you actually benefit the world.’”

Emma Sandall

Emma Sandall. Photo supplied

In 2019, Sandall licensed the rights to the novel and began talking to a New York theatre company about adapting it as a stage play. Then the pandemic hit and the plans were shelved. During the lockdowns, which she spent in Nashville – where she was living at the time, while still married to American singer-songwriter Ben Folds – she came to the decision that what she really wanted to create was a piece of physical theatre.

Sandall is a dancer, choreographer, physical theatre performer and animator. Born in Sydney, she danced with companies including Béjart Ballet Lausanne, The Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet and West Australian Ballet.

She now works as an independent artist, choreographing...