AustLit

'“My feet walk on land that is red blood soaked. Black burnt, yellow sun-drenched country. Stories from thousands of years. Songs eternally kept on the wind and water. I honour lines that have been cut. Poisoned, shot and led to the cliff’s edge. Those who passed to the spirit world before their kin could arrive from the dreaming to continue a physical lineage.”

'Remembering the stories that remain unwritten and unspoken, returned to the earth and stars that they arrived from. Acknowledging that First Nations people are descendants of those who fought for land, family and identity. Not everyone continued to walk this physical world, many returned to the spirit world.

'Kuramanunya honours them. Kuramanunya. The story is told.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

SILENCE is about the space in between. Conversations not being heard and responses that are muted. A drum beats and bodies thrash through frequencies to uncover what lies in the SILENCE. There is SILENCE between stars as the emu travels across the night sky, or the dancer’s energy when they hit the cut between rhythms. It’s also the deafening silence under white noise. The same questions echoed through generations.

We’ve marched across Country. We’ve had promises made and broken. We’ve drafted our own treaty, and still we’re the only sovereign peoples without one.

Choreographed by Bundjalung-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu man Thomas E.S. Kelly, this new dance work pulls it from under the rug and slams it back on the table. Because the conversation about a treaty will never be silenced.

Source: Brisbane Festival