Bridie Hooper is an award winning, Australian artist and maker who champions alternative circus.
Her works are distilled meditations exploring our relationships to hope, power and effort, often using simplicity & singularity of apparatus to challenge form, context and performer/audience relationship. Intersecting ritual, endurance and the body's potential, her performances examine the intricate human psyche.
Bridie’s performance career spans over a decade of national and international touring. A graduate of École Nationale de Cirque de Montréal (2012), she has performed with companies and festivals including CIRCA, GOP Variété Theatre, Montréal Complètement Cirque, Chelsea McGuffin Co, Polytoxic, Na Djinang Circus, Le Monastère and NORPA. During her nine-year engagement with CIRCA, Bridie contributed to the creation of ten debut works—including Humans, En Masse, The Return, and Beyond—and collaborated with quartets, operas, and orchestras. In 2019, she worked alongside Yaron Lifschitz as choreographer and associate circus director on Orpheus & Eurydice, a Circa/Opera Queensland collaboration.
Motivated by a curiosity to expand her choreographic language, Bridie undertook a Gaga Dance Intensive with Batsheva Dance Company in 2018, further deepening her movement vocabulary and creative methodology.
Bridie's independent practice includes her debut solo work INGRESS— 2021 Matilda Award for Best Circus/Physical Theatre Production, 2022 Melbourne Fringe WA Touring Award, her participatory public art experience For Whom The Bell Tolls, Brisbane Powerhouse’s Night Feast Festival 2023 , Junction Arts Festival, 2025, and her recent creation on submission and power, Be Subservient To My Ambition, 2025.
Bridie was a recipient of The Unconformity project’s artist-in-residence program (2023 & 2025), the MICC Utopians Program 2024 and the Riksteatern National Theatre Residency, Stockholm 2024. In 2025, she was an Associate Artist for the NORPA program - Dinner Party At The End Of The World.
Performance highlights: For Whom The Bell Tolls (Night Feast Festival 2023, Junction Arts Festival 2025) Ingress (Melbourne Fringe Festival 2022, Judith Wright Arts Centre 2021), High Priestess Fashion Show (Gail Sorronda 2021), Leviathan (Perth Festival 2020), Opus (Paris Philharmonie 2019), En Masse (QPAC 2018), Rite of Spring (Theatre Gallo Romain, Lyon, France 2018), Humans (Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2017), One Beautiful Thing (Melbourne Arts Centre, 2017) The Return (Barbican Centre, 2016), When One Door Closes (La Boîte Theatre 2016), 2:22 Feature Film by Paul Currie 2015, Stephanie Franzius Fashion Film (Berlin Fashion Week 2013), Beyond (Chamaeleon Theatre- Berlin 2013) Opening Ceremony Vancouver Winter Olympics, (David Atkins 2010)