With its opening line, 'I had my first orgasm when I was nine years old, four days before Christmas 1972', "Dreamtime Alice" grabs you by the throat and hurtles you through a story that is as touching and sad as it is funny and unbelievable...a beautiful story that is full of wonderful surprises and haunting writing; you shouldn't miss it.' - Mark Rubbo, "Herald Suni". Danced and danced because the neon light across the road had just blinked on, because it was the middle of spring, because I was twenty-one, because my father was playing beside me...In this vivid, seductive, gorgeously written memoir, Mandy Sayer recounts the fascinating years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father. Gerry Sayer was a jazz drummer, a beguiling Irish charmer with a million stories and an insatiable love for jam sessions and all-night parties. Mandy grew up captivated by his outrageous tales even after he left the family for good and her mother descended into the distance of drink. When her siblings failed him by rejecting the bohemian performing life, Mandy saw her chance to become a character in his stories, part of the only life he really loved.
So she learned to tap-dance, and they set off together to satisfy their grand ambitions on the toughest stage in the world - New York. Driven by the dream of making it big, Mandy and Gerry arrived in the city with no place to stay and only costumes to their names. They became part of the thrilling, precarious world of street performers - jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters, dancers - who eked out their livings at the mercy of the elements, the cops, complaining neighbours and lurking thieves. in cinematic detial, Sayer tells of the first exhilarating season in New York City, earning 200 a night on Columbus Avenue; offsetting the physical pain of endless performance with the incomparable rush that accompanied it; the lond, difficult winter in New Orleans, surviving on avocadoes and raw vegetables in unheated apartments; and their final unforgettable return to New York. Entwined with this singular story of a busker's life is the deeper, more intimate story of Mandy's transformation from a girl searching for her father's love into a woman who could invent her own language and find her own voice.
For ultimately "Dreamtime Alice" is a triumphant record of a young woman's discovery that she could create her own story at last. Author information: Mandy Sayer studies tap dancing with Cookie Cooks and Brenda Buffalino and later joined Bill Evans Dance Company. Her first novel, "Mood Indigo", won the Vogel Award in 1989; her latest, "The Cross", was a finalist for the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel and was nominated for the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has also been named one of the ten Best Young Australian Novelists by the Sydney Morning Herald. She received an MA in creative writing from Indiana University.