Iona Kewney: Goddess and Alchemist

It's with great sadness that we learned a couple of nights ago of the untimely passing of dance artist Iona Kewney. Superlatives seem useless when writing of her incredible artistry. She didn't just transcend genres, she seemed to inhabit her own singular genre. Onstage, small frame twisted like a pretzel, or bunny hopping on her heels, she seemed otherworldly, existing in a liminal dream—state of another time and space, a melding of fin de siècle dancer Jane Avril and ritualistic performance artist. At times, she seemed plugged into the mains, at other times, fragile and vulnerable.

Iowna Kewney, 1973-2026.

Born in Scotland in 1973, she was a trained artist (she studied fine art and printmaking at the prestigious Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee) and she was a gymnastics champion as a child. She then went on to study New Dance Development in the Netherlands, and Circus School in Sweden. Her muscle memory was such that she could contort and release at will, like an Expressionist study made flesh.

Indeed, she was often some kind of beautiful anachronism, a waif in white shift dress, capricious and feline, drawing upon breath work and contemporary form, bouncing and bounding to pounding techno. She charged the room with tension, often making audiences visibly uncomfortable: that's wonderful. Art should provoke, poke, intensify. The best art is visceral, it sticks in our vital organs and cannot be dislodged. Dance can shake our bones but so too, it must often shake us out of our complacency. Her work with les ballets C de la B, electronic artist Barry 7 from Add N to (X), Ela Orleans and musician Joseph Quimby spoke to the ever shifting, restless nature of her creative process—not to mention her exquisite taste. Laterly, she was based mostly in Brussels, thrilling Belgian audiences with her unpredictable alchemy.

Arts critic Dr Gareth K Vile describes Kewney’s performance as: “A transcendental assault on reality, she was an anchoress offering a prayer to the feral spiritual.” He adds: “She had a post-punk swagger, a faith that the movement would resolve, that the danger implicit in the twisting of the body would complete itself, release some kind of feeling and swing into the next impossible manoeuvre.”

As dangerous as she seemed on the stage, she was a playful and lovely person offstage, with a wonderful sense of humour and unassuming nature. There's an Iona Kewney shaped hole in the world now. She was truly unique and beautiful.

Lorna Irvine

Based in Glasgow, Lorna was delightfully corrupted by the work of Michael Clark in her early teens, and has never looked back. Passionate about dance, music, and theatre she writes regularly for the List, Across the Arts and Exeunt. She also wrote on dance, drama and whatever particular obsession she had that week for the Shimmy, the Skinny and TLG and has contributed to Mslexia, TYCI and the Vile Blog.

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