Alward is a Winnipeg performance artist whose media works address the ideas of ritual and spectacle. Her current video Totentanz arose out of the image of the world scale medieval theatre in its most tragic sense. For Alward, AIDS has become a symbolic disease that has taken on apocalyptic dimensions. She incorporates blood and semen into her ritual in an attempt to reconcile the ambivalent attitude towards AIDS that has prevailed. Totentanz addresses the idea of personal responsibility and Alward's own self-conscious attempt to confront the inadequacy of art in the face of death.