The Wellington 26-year-old gave the first performance of three at the Dunedin Fringe Festival last night, in a stunning contemporary circus show titled Temporal Aria.
Inspired by her ADHD diagnosis, the show fuses the ancient art of hair suspension with acrobatics to explore the profound tension between control and surrender.
Hair suspension (or hair hanging) is a rare circus aerial act where performers are suspended, spun or swung solely by their hair.
The art can be very painful, and it requires specialised techniques to tie the hair to a secure rig, distributing the weight evenly across the scalp to prevent injury.
Miss Maisey said she became an acrobatic aerial performer after taking a gap year from study at the University of Otago.
‘‘I was at uni for a year, studying health sciences. I wanted to study medicine, but I really struggled.
‘‘I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t focus. I didn’t really understand how everyone around me could sit there and study.
‘‘So I left and I joined a circus course for what was meant to be a gap year.’’
But once she started the course, something clicked and she continued.
She said she had never studied dance. Her only previous related experience was rock climbing.
‘‘The movement I could do and the structure of that course was really great for me.’’
As soon as she finished the two-year course, she joined a touring New Zealand circus and started producing her own shows.
During that time, she continued to struggle with her attention span, and finally sought medical help.
It was then she was diagnosed with ADHD.
Knowing the cause of her symptoms had made a huge difference in her life, she said.
Her Dunedin Fringe Festival performance is a deeply personal exploration of distractibility, executive dysfunction and her pursuit of inner peace.
‘‘It really portrays the struggle at the beginning — of being really stuck in my own head and not being able to get out of that.’’
Through feats of extraordinary strength and vulnerability, she transforms struggle into artistry, expressing a journey towards balance and self-acceptance.
She said at its heart, Temporal Aria was about learning to release control and accept support, a powerful shift from isolation to connection.
‘‘Asking for help — it’s not a sign of weakness.
‘‘It’s not just about the act of letting go, but about what we discover in the process: joy, contentment and the redefinition of success as peace within.’’
She was now in a place where she fitted and life made sense.
‘‘ADHD is definitely still something that I struggle with, and will continue to.
‘‘But I think this is a much better path for me.’’
The show won the New Zealand Fringe Momentous Movement Award and the Reykjavik Fringe Take Your Breath Away Award in 2025.
It continues at the Mayfair Theatre tonight and tomorrow at 7pm.
