It is love at first sight. 

I should not be shocked. But then, she is 88! Yes, born in 1933. A lifelong royalist. Always votes habitual conservative. Never eats chicken leg with her fingers. Only just stopped wearing evening gloves.

The yummy titbit of her eye is young enough to be her great grandchild. Delectable body. Scrumptious face. Mouth-watering flesh.

This long-locked, ruby cheeked seraph enters the performance space, and my companion swoons like Sappho at the foot of Aphrodite.

The demigod comes on, oozing rapture. Enthralment drips from every pore of the dancer. Wonder flings from each eye, sharp like the arrow piercing St Teresa’s heart.

All in tantalising time, enchantment swells into grace, grace brims into poise, poise dilates into light. Exhilaration, freedom and verve break-out. The dancer bursts into firework, igniting the stage.

But, lo! The flare dies. The skyrocket crashes to earth. The light snuffs out.

Human tragedy will not stay put. It returns from one generation to the next. Suffering blights. Struggle plagues. Destructiveness reigns again.

Then, fragile as spring, vulnerable as a cloud-kissed dawn, rest comes back into the hearts of mortal things. Ease comes home. Nourishment replenishes the earth.

Revitalisation tickles the world. Renewal follows in the wake of courage reborn.

My 88-year-old friend and I feel a kaleidoscope of sensation. She and I reflect at the end of Josh Freedman’s performance, titled Sweet Fleshed, Loose Skinned, Highly Perfumed. We leave the arts venue, Readymade Works, in Ultimo. The show, on 25th September, 2022, is part of Sydney Fringe Festival. 

I ask my friend what she thinks, now that we have experienced Josh Freedman’s tally of the sweep of human emotion, through the art of dance and theatre.

“I’m sixteen again!” she swoons.