“Once in a Blue Moon,” created and performed by Tala Issaoui as part of PYT Fairfield at the Sydney Fringe Festival, delivers a brief yet densely layered experience that fuses dance, ritual, and evocative visual storytelling.
Spanning just 30 minutes, Issaoui’s multidisciplinary performance beckons the audience into a shifting world of transformation. It’s a melancholic trilogy told through patterns, transitions, and potent symbolism.
The work opens with a striking video projection: Issaoui’s dance, rendered in cinematic hues and fluid imagery.
The transitions between film and live presence feel seamless, as the artist materialises onstage before a circular altar adorned with pebbles, an urn, and a pair of goblets.
The artist’s movements around this circle are cyclical and deliberate, blending ritual with choreography in a way that bridges the personal and the universal, with the lights, sound and music complimenting each phase.
Throughout, imagery and symbolism abound; the veil, for instance, which seems to float between meanings, might connote marriage, transformation, or transcendence.
The rhythmic motions, paired with dynamic lighting and a soundscape of often eery music, build tension and drama: thunder and lightning suggest fear and elemental power, while the act of dousing with water feels like a physical release, mourning, or rebirth. Texture becomes tangible as exaggerated makeup begins to spill down Issaoui’s face, accentuating the emotional intensity and the sense of unravelling.
The performer’s precision timing is key, with the crafted sound and lighting cues. These multi-dimensional effects surround the audience with layers of sensation, blurring boundaries between dance, ritual, and visual art.
Patterns repeat and modulate, symbolising repetition and cyclical pain, while the pace of the piece builds into a crescendo of melancholy.
Issaoui is visibly moved by the work’s close, punctuating the experience with authenticity and emotional depth. The ritual ends not with clear answers, but with a shared sense that something profound, if hard to articulate, has transpired.
While “Once in a Blue Moon” may not suit every taste, I found myself admiring the precision and vision more than personally connecting with its abstract ethos. It stands as a compelling example of experimental performance in Western Sydney. The blending of film, choreography, sound, and symbolic staging delivers a textured, esoteric meditation on grief, transformation, and spiritual passage. Issaoui’s willingness to traverse the boundaries of art-form and narrative ensures this work is both brave and memorable. I admire and am in awe of the power of the personal artistic risk and wholehearted embodiment.
Recommended for those ready to meaningfully engage with experimental theatre. It is a deep, beautiful, brave and vulnerable piece of performance art.
To book tickets to Once In A Blue Moon, please visit https://sydneyfringe.com/events/once-in-a-blue-moon/.
Photographer: Benjamin Tiger La
