Emma Roberts and Julian Marshall, Shaping the Invisible

Review in Issue 19-3 | Autumn 2007

A trail of pink rose petals, a mound of smooth white chalk pebbles, a grand piano adorned with two lilies, a performer powdering her limbs in the corner. This is a physical performance-improvisation, through the body, with piano accompaniment by Julian Marshall. With a supreme presence, Emma Roberts draws shapes, sounds, songs and atmospheres from around and within her. Dancing with a directness, a rawness, and an immediacy, a meeting with the internal into the external manifests before us revealing nuances, frailties, strengths, imaginings, perceptions. Emma has a rare connectedness to herself, the stories inside, the space around, to the emotions of the audience, who wept and laughed. With her open face, deep face, quizzical face, so moving in her honesty, Emma, grounded and present, is a trigger for buried emotion.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. May 2007

This article in the magazine

Issue 19-3
p. 29