The Arc of a Heart Shaped Curve

The Arc of a Heart Shaped Curve is a new dance piece performed by Sighile Hennessy and Cindy Cummings. Directed by Steve Batts, with live music by Dave Boyd, the work moves with a patient rhythm that takes a path into the deep connection of friendship. Allow your body clock to be set to slow and let the honest meeting of two hearts draw you in.

This project is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland Dance Project Award and an ArtLinks Bursary Kilkenny County Council, 2025.

Created by Sighile Hennessy, Cindy Cummings, Steve Batts, Dave Boyd and Eoin Winning.

Sighile Hennessy

Sighile Hennessy is a performer, mover, theatre-artist based in Kilkenny. She was a founder-member of KCAT Arts Centre’s Equinox Theatre Company, creating and touring original shows with directors Medb Lambert and Janice de Broithe. Past Equinox shows include: POWER: We All Come From Somewhere (premiered Prague Jan 2020; film 2021); The M House (Dublin theatre Festival, and Bounce! Festival, Belfast) 2018; Memory Box (National Tour) 2015; (The Making of) The Frogs after Aristophanes (Project Arts Centre, Dublin Fringe Festival) 2012. Other performance work includes: The Big Chapel X (Asylum, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Abbey Theatre) 2019; The Bridge Street Project; (Equinox, Asylum, Callan Workhouse Union) 2015; In my Body are these Islands (Croí Glan) 2011; Six by Sundown (Asylum) 2008.

During her time at KCAT Sighile became interested in developing her dance work. She was the recipient of an Arts and Disability Connects Mentoring Award in 2014 to engage in a process to develop a solo work with performer/facilitator Susie Lamb. Following on from this, she began working with Cindy Cummings and Steve Batts, supported by an Arts Council professional development award in 2020. The trio went on to co-create ‘Out There’, a solo work for Sighile that premiered at the Watergate Theatre (Kilkenny) and toured to Johannesburg, SA as part of the Body Moves International Inclusive Dance Festival at Sibikwa Arts Centre in 2022 (supported by the Irish Embassy of South Africa, Kcat Arts Centre and Echo Echo Dance Theatre).
Another highlight of Sighile’s career was to be one of three artists commissioned by Project Arts Centre to participate in Negotiate: an artistic response, in collaboration with artist Róisín Power Hackett to a TEDI policy developed by Project Arts Centre in 2021.

Cindy Cummings

Cindy Cummings is a dance artist whose practice integrates dance, theatre, and live art. Since 1986, she has created collaborative works with artists around the world for live performance, installation, and film. Unifying her practice are several themes: the vulnerable and mutable place of the body within contemporary society; the centrality of play and humor as tools of creative interrogation; and a passion for scientific ideas, rigor, and innovation.

Based in Co. Kilkenny, she was Movement Director at KCAT Inclusive Arts Centre (2018–2023). She choreographed several productions with KCAT’s Equinox Theatre Company, including The M House, The Water Boys, and POWER: We All Come From Somewhere (play and film). In 2023, she was co-creator of Out There, a solo for Síghile Hennessy (directed by Steve Batts), which traveled to Johannesburg as part of the Body Moves Inclusive Dance Festival at Sibikwa Arts Centre.

Cindy is a tutor on the Inclusive Dance Cork programme at Dance Cork Firkin Crane and is working with Asylum Productions on The Alice Project for the 2026 Kilkenny Arts Festival. She has worked on several Asylum shows (Big Chapel X, Everything Must Go, The Local) and with director Donal Gallagher on What I (Don’t) Know About Autism, co-produced by Jody O’Neill and the Abbey Theatre. Since 2007, Cindy has been a member of Aosdána