She stomps on tattered shoes into the long, narrow performance space, all concentration, moving forwards along a line, looking straight ahead and into the moving light source. She switches her half smiling attention to the audience, flips into a set of sideways almost Indian dance poses, half-turns of the body. Her attention moves to her assistant with the light as he moves to another part of the space. The shadow of the tiny dancer shoots up and across the wall. Her movement is sometimes eccentric, sometimes reminiscent of something ‘oriental,’ sometimes ‘exotic,’ sometimes minimal. Loud grunge by Beck interspersed with silence counterpoints the performance. She completes the piece with a perfect swan dive into her tatty shoes. She brings the house down with her. Lisa O’Neill describes Sweet Yeti as “a movement based piece designed to take the viewer on a theatrical journey into the world of one small women. The piece is peculiar in manner with a sudden twist and turn of thought around every corner. The woman is both happy and sad, determined and carefree, loud and soft, but most of all, she is alive.”
Lisa O’Neill is an independent dance artist now based in Brisbane. She has worked as performer, choreographer and teacher both in Brisbane and with the Darc Swan Company in Sydney. She has a diploma in Dance from QUT. Sweet Yeti is her first solo work.
The Crab Room artist-run space, Brisbane
RealTime issue #7 June-July 1995 pg. 25
© Virginia Baxter; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]
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