DREAM MAN
TST Studio, 37 Mt Eden Road, Auckland
24/02/2017 - 25/02/2017
Production Details
Do you want to be enticed, seduced and charmed? Get up close and personal with a dreamer, an idealist. There will be broad cheeky grins, lounging movement and some magical moves. Also, it will be a place to question. Are you comfortable? Am I comfortable? We are bombarded with images everyday, perfect and idealistic. Dream Man explores how our private selves contradict the public image we project. Join me for a showing of Dream Man, a contemporary dance solo set in an intimate gallery space. Feedback is not only welcome but encouraged. Get a drink with me afterwards and we can have a chat.
Lydia Connolly-Hiatt
Performance installation , Dance , Contemporary dance ,
30 mins
She entices us in
Review by Sarah Knox 25th Feb 2017
Lydia Connolly-Hiatt presents Dream Man, an intimate 30 minute solo performance in The Spreading Tree studio as part of Auckland Fringe 2017. Concrete tiles provide a small performance space and lampshades hang above. A wooden chair with an emerald green velvet seat is positioned facing the diagonal on upstage right.
Connolly-Hiatt enters looking smug, confident, mischievous, and mysterious. With a strong connection with the audience she eyes each of us up, never faltering. I feel neither threatened nor confused, but rather intrigued and amused. Her face is extraordinarily expressive. It seems as if she has studied every episode of America’s Next Top Model and then one-upped them with both subtly and charisma. Wearing a green shirt that perfectly matches the chair, and a pair of beige slacks, she writhes on the floor in smooth arcs with extended limbs, it is provocative and technically effortless. Looking like a 1950’s feminist pinup she draws lines with her fingertips across her body and the floor. She knows how to hold the space and her movement seems driven by her internal experience rather than an external vision of what the movement should look like. She is enticing us in, like she has a surprise for us. I don’t know what it is, but I also don’t care. I want it.
She takes her time to unravel and put herself back together again. It is an ongoing quiet and patient struggle to adhere to ‘femininity’ and to crumble away to become more of herself. Waves of tension, uncomfortability and resignation pass.
I am left with that kind of satisfaction you feel after eating a delicious Japanese meal at Tanuki’s Cave. Not too little, not too much, a little bit of everything that tickles your fancy. But there has been time to absorb and savor, with some good company and conversation. Not a scrap of editing was required and each movement carefully crafted and totally necessary. 30 minute shows might just be where it’s at.
You have one more chance to see Dream Man tonight (Saturday 25 February). Koha/donation entry, RSVP to dycypherproductions@gmail.com
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