- Title:
- In The Other Room, Fleur Conlon
- Author:
- Joshua Edward
- Date:
- 18.06.26
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
Walking into the settling room, there are clear divisions—mostly along one far edge, or neatly in the middle. Structures or misty architectures. I came home and asked out loud: can I weigh the air in this room?
There’s a trim made of cables down the left hand side, a microphone, the line rips off a corner—Fleur Conlon is showing us the boundaries of The Other Room. Once it is all set up she dances a doorway— moves a doorway—shapes a doorway (invisible)…out of the current room and into the inaccessible second space. Conlon takes her shoes off, stepping in. The dance is doing something domestic, tired, lifting things up, putting them down. Slipping out some small internal conversations, Conlon acts the words with the corners of her mouth. I do that too while I clean the house; small imagined arguments or prayers slip out.
Some sound is a pulsing kind of head-full dog-whistle, the children cover their ears. So do I, in the anxious adult way: my shoulders in a tight shrug. It’s more like compressed air than sound, like aeroplane travel, or hard rain; some dulling, heartbeat, essential rhythm. Conlon’s face is blank, I read it as: annoyed, in the way the dance makes her body behave, a frustration with being out of control in a very mundane way. This practice of embodiment is essential for Conlon, ownership of a body. Maybe that’s the work?
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
A purpose for returning to dance after 12 years, Conlon’s reconnection is bold, an individually brave move—to see how life might have changed the dancer's ability to connect with the basal self. At times the dance is intentionally confused with the space or atmosphere which surrounds it, blooming out loose and then becoming tight and shrunken, together making the work generous. I mean this in a particular way, when a work is too tight it does not let the audience in, In The Other Room is constructed open, wafting in.
At times you want to console this character, but I think fear is more interesting. I fear the character because of the blank space which is pushed forward. I feel the same way when I perceive women my mothers age alone, the blank is inherited fear, or elderly people eating alone, a blank for your own mortality. Largely the microphone is a dull prop, which is good, it is very rock-star to have a microphone as a prop. It is important that you take using it quite seriously.
I wonder the entire time what will burst forward from the microphone, from the room, to this room. When it finally does come I wonder if it really ever needed to. There are moments of vocalisation by the performer throughout the dance, however with the authority of a microphone they are less sincere. The noise issuing out is nervous in a way that is very aware of the audience’s room. I am distracted from the room Conlon and I had just been building. I wondered: what words are you actually looking for? The sound of the room was behaving in a way which murmured already. The movements too, so why words now? Everything was already being said.
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
The lights are turned out, which, in contrast makes the room dim and blue, highlights turn glossy monochrome, contouring the set and dancer. The remainder of the performance takes place here, in a dim blue evening. I want to go off track a bit, to talk about the audience and their participation in the dance. The chairs are arranged in rows which curve inward with a horseshoe shape; there are fewer seats at the front than the back. I am in the left front, my partner next to me on the right, on their right are two young children. Behind us their father and I imagine, grandparents. I am surrounded by the dancer’s family, or at least I perceive them as the dancer’s family and I wonder if they get this.
I feel a kind of anxiety, flipping that question over, continue the dance. The two young children got the work. One visibly frightened by the specter, sought comfort from their father. The mirror held up by Conlon shows a quiet distortion, so slippery against the dancer’s usual persona that we cannot locate patterns to assure of predictably. It is a doppelgänger effect, an image of the mother made of water. This additional performance is important in convincing me that the dance is Maintenance Art (Mierle Laderman Ukeles) like washing gallery floors, or collecting lint, or mapping the form of a body over time, a representation of the unidentified feminine, something alike is happening here.
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
In-Conversation
Fleur Conlon (FC) & Joshua Edward (JE)
On: In The Other Room
Tuesday 24th February
JE: I’m wondering: why return now? I don’t mean that as an interrogation—I’m genuinely interested in what brought you back.
FC: It was curiosity—curiosity to be back in the studio. When I read the application for Temperance Hall it felt like a supportive space to re-engage after time away. Being a mother to very young children, short residencies can feel overwhelming; this one sounded doable and actually right.
In a way it reminded me of my master’s: dedicated time to sit and think and to rediscover my choreographic interests. I feel unfinished. I don’t want to close that chapter off—the dancing and the making.
JE: Coming out of the residency, where do you feel the work wants to go?
FC: Re-watching the footage and looking at the images, I can see how much space there is to grow the ideas. As I repeated the material in preparation for the showing, it started to feel rich—heading somewhere.
Afterwards I have been thinking about where else I could show it. I want to work out who could be involved—other dancers, sound—so there’s dialogue in the process. The residency reminded me how valuable it is to talk about the work while it’s being made.
Friends came in and I really valued those conversations. The same with the sound designer, Robbie—when he came in last week—it was exactly what the piece needed. That exchange between sound and movement, fed the work.
Even though the work felt vulnerable, it felt good to perform it. It felt ready (enough). I could feel certain moments inside it opening up and that’s what I want to amplify—and extend.
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
JE: The score seemed fundamental to how the work shifts between internal experience and what’s shown. Can you talk about your collaboration with sound?
FC: I wanted rupture—tension. Not just interruption, but something present, something pressing against the movement.
For me, it made the movement more tense, in a productive way. Sound can change how a visual work is read and it can help hold the space. I wanted slower movement, spaciousness, stillness and the sound helped hold those moments: taking time, watching her think and react, tracking attention.
JE: Space feels like an active material in the work. How do you think about the room itself shaping the choreography?
FC: The work mirrors whichever space I’m in—the room leads it. Even in a draft showing, people asked how I might take the performance from the residency space into the main hall. The room feeds the choreography.
I shifted my thinking from “a space” to “a room”—to bring out what it means to be in this room specifically, in real time. How do I place myself in the other room—so to speak.
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
JE: You keep returning to pathways, edges, entrances and exits—as if you’re showing the audience a map. What are you doing with that mapping?
FC: I get obsessed with pathways: checking edges, moving to the microphone, going away and putting my shoes back on—entering, exiting. I’m showing the audience the map.
The changing—undressing, dressing—always feels right. Putting something on, taking it off: it carries hesitation, like thinking, what am I going to say?—especially around the microphone.
I like playing with normality: everyday moments, but rendered as gesture, or slightly strange. That pedestrian way of re-engaging fascinates me.
Towards the end, when I dropped the mic, I was particular about moving in this new room—with obstacles—how it pressed me in and how I pressed against it. Then turning the lights off opened it again.
JE: Let’s talk about the microphone. In the work it reads as both ordinary and charged—something the audience waits on. What role does it play for you?
FC: I still don’t know exactly, but it became a way to amplify hesitation. In that last week, what was brewing was this stuttering. As the floor material progressed there was uncertainty, and attention building and the mic helped bring out what the voice was doing inside the movement—what was trying to surface in the sequence leading up to it.
I tried so many times to speak the text that became the voiceover at the beginning. Every time it felt wrong—too clear. So I kept stopping and starting, feeling uncomfortable. And then over time I thought: this is what it is. It’s the stuttering. It’s the hesitation.
I became interested in the in-between sounds: the alphabet, learned sounds from childhood; how we try to speak and what emerges is an “um,” a sigh—those small interruptions. How we think before we speak; how we get caught; how we lose words. The stuckness became the content.
I didn’t include it in the showing, but at one point I was crying into the microphone. I was embarrassed, but it was interesting to try because I felt safe. If it goes on long enough, the audience has to sit with the discomfort: is she crying for real, is it performed, what is happening?
That also helped me think about how to hold the space—how to invite the audience’s focus into the room. Quick movement can be incredible, but slowing down and pausing is a strength. Even in stillness you’re still breathing, still moving.
And looking back, I’m interested in where it could go. It feels like there’s more there—like a release. People who watched, related to it personally and politically, in the world right now. That uncertainty—leaning into it—became the word, in a way.
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
JE: The work has clear chapters, but it doesn’t feel segmented. The lighting change—fluorescent to natural evening light—lands as a shift in perception. How did you decide to work with light like that?
FC: I didn’t have enough time to explore colour properly, but watching the video back, it’s very blue and the windows glow.
In the moment, it was more instinctive: the lights have to go off now. It felt inevitable. Late in the year, when no one was in the building, there was often one stage light left on and every time I packed up I’d turn around and think: that light is so nice—the room is dim and calm.
What you said about eyes adjusting—I’ll remember that.
JE: You’ve described a kind of creative torture—wanting the work to be “something else,” when it’s already in the body. Can you expand?
FC: I connect to works where the performer is generous—inviting—and you can tell they’re really going somewhere in their mind or body.
Most of the time I was thinking, what is it going to be? And you get caught in that: it has to be something new. But sometimes you forget it’s already there—in the body. Trusting that, especially as an older performer: leaning into what’s already there and pulling that out, instead of thinking, what do I invent now?
Fleur Conlon, In The Other Room, 2026, performance documentation, Temperance Hall, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Jeff Busby.
Joshua Edward is a visual artist, creative consultant & editor. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, they have exhibited in Australia, Germany and the United States.
Joshua is Co-Founder and Editor; Fine Art at no more poetry, an independent poetry and fine-art press. They have a particular interest in fictive brand systems as artistic instrument. Their ongoing project RoutineDarling operates as a brand framework producing an edition of fifty t-shirts collectively constituting one artwork.
Joshua attempts to subvert domestic form through shifts in scale, function and material tension — building imagined worlds from recognisable silhouettes, vernacular fragments and popular iconography to render unfamiliar conditions visible.
From 2017 to 2024, Joshua exhibited collaboratively as IchikawaEdward alongside Ichikawa Lee.
In 2025 and 2026, Performance Review and Temperance Hall are partnering to bring you written responses to Temperance Hall’s Front Studio Residency. This program offers six choreographic artists two-month studio residencies across the year and includes a stipend, public showing and photographic documentation.
To complement this, Performance Review is publishing a series of written responses on the public outcomes of this program, penned by emerging arts writers and grounded in conversations with these artists. The aim of this collaboration is to mutually develop critical reflection on the practices of local choreographic artists and build performance literacy in arts writing.
These responses have been funded by Temperance Hall through support from Creative Australia and independently commissioned by Performance Review. The writers in this program have been mentored by Anador Walsh, Performance Review’s Director.
The 2025 Temperance Hall Front Studio Residents are Tony Yap, Chung Nguyen, Geoffrey Watson, Deanne Butterworth, Gabriella Imrichova and Fleur Conlon.
In this piece, Joshua Edward engages with the Friday 30 January 2026 public showing of Fleur Conlon’s In The Other Room at Temperance Hall.