Jo Lloyd
Philipa Rothfield
Not exactly emerging but achieving recognition in her own right, Jo Lloyd has performed in Shelley Lasica’s and Sandra Parker’s work over many years. She received a Green Room award nomination in 1999 for her performance of Situation Live (Lasica) and In the Heart of the Eye (Parker, Danceworks). A graduate of the VCA, Jo is not typically ‘dancerly’ though she is quite capable of elegance. She executes other people’s choreography without affectation. The quiet assertion in her work manifests itself through a kinaesthetic immersion in action. She recently performed in the July Dancehouse season, The Dance Card and her work showed that she is increasingly extending her kinaesthetic range, exhibiting more confidence to experiment and therefore create surprising and new forms of movement. Jo Lloyd keeps movement coursing through her body, not in terms of compulsive activity but through sustained rhythmic complexity, tonal differentiations and a really nice bounce that’s capitalized through quick shifts of her body through space. By that I mean she has a certain quality which she takes with her in quickly shifting her centre of gravity. Sometimes this is seen in a range of little lunges, sometimes in a transfer of weight from one side of the pelvis to the other. She can also access an emotive, expressive, gestural palette combined with more abstract forms of action. Her relationship to music takes the form of dialogue rather than illustration in a way which sustains the musicality in her own body. It would be good to see her make and show a lengthy piece of work.
RealTime issue #57 Oct-Nov 2003 pg. 10
