REVIEW EXTRACTS

“Yarnell, in the first solo of the evening, is a strong, yet delicate and precise mover with a finely articulated sense of detail expressed through her body. Tiny gestures that ripple through tightly held limbs and torso suddenly drop through her body weight into elongated and elegant lunges where her control over movement and shape is secure and solid. While the motivation and meaning for each section of the solo is hard to discern, Yarnell holds it firmly in her grasp with a tight and determined focus that amply rewards the attention of the audience. At some moments she perfectly zoomorphises into an animalistic state then in a flash she is a ballerina in tutu turning a fast ménage around the stage, which gives the viewer quite a buzz of pleasure.”

Review by: Roy Campbell-Moore Theatre Wales. 19 April 2015

“Yarnell proves to be a delicate, mesmerising performer whose work is informed by her experience of motherhood and the tightness of the bond between mother and child…

After the show, the works linger and echo in the mind and thoughts continue to be provoked. So perhaps we do think, after all.”

Review by: Jennie Macfie Dance & Drama Moray Showcase 31 Jul 2012  

“Changing the space as she came into the room, Yarnell … revealed the dance studio mirror, shedding a new light on the room as she began. The most striking aspect of her piece was the introduction of her infant daughter Hepzibah, just a few months old. Yarnell explains: "She is terrifying because she cries and because I can't make her happy all of the time and because I don't want anything bad to happen to her." Hepzibah wears a t-shirt that reads 'C'est ne pas moi'“

Work so beautiful and powerful to behold that you cannot fail to be moved”

Reviewed by: Michael Wilkinson

“I was moved by Nest in many ways and the work has stayed with me. I would love to see Nest performed annually to see who the work evolve as Anushiye and her daughter grow and change. Performing with her daughter Nest felt like the ultimate in improvisational performance - you simply cannot predict what a toddler will do. I loved this. The unpredictable nature of the piece moved me, excited me and caused me to reflect on myself as parent, artist and human. I often consider what is a movement, a step, a gesture, and what is life - maybe they are one and the same? I found the element of chance woven into the rehearsed and researched movements expressive of the nature of parenting and living. Anushiye was at times torn between responsibility and creation and she offered this challenge itself up as her creation - brilliant!”

Merkel Goss: audience feedback NEST 

“I hardly remember the first time that I met Anushiye, yet each and every encounter was extraordinary. I find her to be one of the most remarkable artists I have ever seen on stage. A show of hers is always something I cannot miss. I have seen numerous solos of hers. And what I love is that she does not take the easy road, but searches and searches to a depth I rarely see in most set material. And her most recent piece when she was pregnant and which I saw was simple incredible. All of us there felt it. I knew I really was really watching someone massively talented. It's the most lightly eloquent, fascinatingly subversive and beautiful work.

Sally Marie: Director Sweetshop Revolution

“I believe this artist to be a hugely important voice on the UK dance and performance network. Ms Yarnells work is unique and powerful, deeply felt and researched and therefore moving and authentic to audiences who experience it.”

MORAG DEYES: Artisitc director DANCE BASE

Anushiye is an exquisite movement artist who weaves mundane textures of life into artistic works that celebrate and affirm the profound beauty of ordinary human existence. Her autobiographical journeys pushes the ordinary rituals of living centre stage in a manner that reveals the intrinsic wholeness of each conscious and not-so-conscious moment and movement of common life. Her performance works engage audiences to experience the acute delicacies of embodied living. In 2012… Anushiye was working on the final stages of I Think…Not, building a critical movement conversation around her journey as a new mother, highlighting the relational shifts and expectations, and the implications and complications of negotiating multiple priorities with limited energies. …The work was powerful and transformative …The audience engagement highlighted the pivotal role of the audience as witness, as each member of the audience was a part of a circular placement and consequently encountered the performance from difference angles. The strategic circular seating meant that no two persons witnessed the same performance and the audience exchange revealed that what was unseen and not heard by one or another audience member was as important as what was seen and heard. The tension between the seen and the unseen/the heard and the not- heard was a conscious part of the Anushiye’s choreographic choice, critical to the philosophical underpinning of the movement and sound/text scores.

Carol Marie Webster:  AHRC Cultural Engagement Research Fellow The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

“Ms Yarnell,. who has won a Creative Wales award, is an innovative, tantalising and provocative performer: Exotica can be infuriating, obscure and meandering, but it is also at times wonderful, disturbing and physically impressive.”

EXOTICA reviewed by David Adams

“In her distinctive quirky, gauche-yet-elegant style, she explores the relationship between the two species of animal…It steered course a between the erotic and the absurd with a fine sense of intriguing ambiguity”

BEAR the Wanderer reviewed by: David Adams

I am moved and always transported in my thinking by Anushiye’s work. It fails to compromise in a production culture where dance is sometimes elitist and shallow. Her work is courageous, deep and emotionally intelligent. She reveals herself as mother, as maker and as a a human being who is working so hard to understand and navigate the present world. NEST was a transparent and live enquiry into motherhood and daughterhood and the ever changing relationship of care and being together. The last performance i saw in Cardigan this summer was an insight and mirror into which we were all able to consider our parenting and relationships to our children. In the ongoing nature of this work Anushiye reveals the adjustments made to the growing relationship and the awkward processes of learning, failing, falling and loving.

Simon Whitehead: Artist

I find it to be rare work, work of genuine exploration, self-examination and methodological rigour. I believe her practice signals an immersion in something that is deeply authentic and informed by integrity and originality…In many ways Anushiye is the artist we all want to be – I think her experiment is quite genuinely life itself: her process is living, and her practice is simply the means of bringing movement, dance, bodies, space, ritual, and delicate, bold and subtle gestures - to that lived daily experience. I think this ‘way’ that she brings – and cannot help but bringing to her practice – underpins deeply rare qualities, creative qualities that are vital to continue nurturing

Rabab Ghazoul: Artist