Mephisto Waltz | Canberra Times | 1992
Remarkable exploration of fears held within
By Larry Ruffell
A REMARKABLE performance, as much for its stamina and technique as for the deeply personal nature of the material, was given by Aida Amirkhanian. For over an hour, solo creator and performer Amirkhanian dances and declaims, whispers and wails, sings and sobs hardly out of breath for a moment...
It is a very personal, yet also universal exploration of fears, essentially contained within, though often unidentified, unconscious and unreal.
Mephisto Waltz | Canberra Times
An outstanding performance for its flow of movement and emotion, its total commitment and its integrity
By Larry Ruffell
Aida Amirkhanian once again stuns with her performance and challenges with her views. In her solo work, Mephisto Waltz, she sidles surreptitiously into our hearts, then grabs and manipulates our emotions like a master juggler. The quiet beautiful and lyrical opening movement abruptly ends as she stops motionless mid-stage, robbing us of our comfort and security, and with dialogue, focuses on our sudden discomfort which represents for a moment, the only flow of movement between performer and audience. Returning to movement, she absorbs and expresses all our fears, culminating in a frenzied dance of almost complete inhibition.
Mephisto Waltz | Canberra Times | 1992
She is not just a dancer. She is an artist, and dance is part of her art form
By Robert Macklin
To say that Aida Amirkhanian is a dancer is a little like saying the Eiffel Tower is a lookout. Certainly, you can take a lift to the top and the view is engaging. But by then you aren't seeing the tower itself with its lean strength, it's soaring spirit, its spare design, its truthful lines. You are looking in the wrong place to find its essence – for that resides inside the structure and it is seen only with an inner eye.
Loneliness | Canberra Times
Some powerful and lyrical dance by Amirkhanian complimented the clear dramatic structure of the work
By Larry Ruffell
As usual, Amirkhanian's work is succinct and heartfelt, challenging the viewer to respond. She reaches out with such compelling, child-like openness it is hard to imagine a heart that would not open to receive it.
LONELINESS | Santa Barbara News-Press | 1998
Her Loneliness was not the emptiness of solitude, but the hopeless despair of tragic loss
By John V. Chapman
Aida Amirkhanian has worked with one of this century's masters of dance / theater, Maurice Béjart, and her work, "Loneliness" was redolent with the angst and gut-wrenching expressionism... she danced with clean, strong leg extensions, thrusting out against heartless fate. It was a harrowing portrait, made shockingly immediate by Amirkhanian's total immersion and conviction in her performance.
LONELINESS | Sydney Morning Herald | 1995
Aida Amirkhanian traces the transitions in her life with affecting sensitivity and intensity
By Jill Sykes
With simple props such as family photographs... she evokes an emotional narrative that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Jivan | Sydney Review | 1995
For me, the discovery of Week 1 was Aida Amirkhanian
By Paul McGillick
The compelling authenticity of the performance and the rigor of its development made for a riveting experience...
Intrigued Currents | Canberra Times | 1988
The two powerful bodies of the dancers impress with their strength and awareness of every movement
By Helen Musa
Aida Amirkhanian, who choreographed Alchemy earlier this year, has this time developed Intrigued Currents for two dancers. Strikingly costumed and lit, the work moves from the disciplined angular movements and intertwining of Kama Sutra to a wittily seductive essay on flirtation.
Mephisto Waltz | Dance Australia | 1992
It is as thought there is a taut elastic band stretched out between the performer and her audience
Her Mephisto Waltz has the intensity of white light. Superlatives, yes, and richly deserved. I have seen this piece evolve from its beginnings to its completion. Essentially, the work is a journey, a personal, interior journey, distilled through dance. Courageously, Amirkhanian reveals the predicaments life has placed her in and the fear, guilt and blame she has experienced. She dances her experiences out and explodes them with life-affirming laughter. Amirkhanian's dance is a demanding experience for the audience.
Dust off the Dimplex | Canberra Times
Amirkhanian plays with external, natural light sources as the Pirandellian characters weave in and out of "reality"
By Helen Musa
Aida Amirkhanian's precision-made directing brought out much hidden repression in Sydney writer Daniel Lapaine's Art, life and the Other Thing... one of the best I've seen in a while...
Alchemy | Muse Magazine, Canberra | 1988
Dancers express the creative principles of Body, Soul and Spirit
By Helen Musa
In some ways the more abstract pieces were more artistically satisfying... Aida Amirkhanian's Alchemy was a case in point...
Alchemy | Muse Magazine, Canberra | 1988
Aida Amirkhanian alone, produced a well-wrought work, which elicited a tight, committed and convincing performance
By Larry Ruffell
Of the four choreographers who contributed, one was in a class streets ahead of the others. An even more interesting characteristic was that the quality of the performing also varied in direct proportion to the quality of the choreography.
CREDO | Muse Magazine, Canberra | 1993
Credo, a brilliant work conceived by Aida Amirkhanian... was a masterful piece of dance theatre
By Kate Civil
Credo was a highly diverse and provoking performance that satisfied in all aspects from concept to design to performance. More work with such depth is much awaited.
