AustLit

'Intercultural dance company Marrugeku bring to life the buried, haunting story of Broome’s pearling industry, and the bond between Malay peoples and First Peoples of the Kimberley.

'Reflecting on early colonial times of racism, slavery and stolen children, Mutiara celebrates a deep connection that often led to love and lifelong companionship.

'Marrugeku’s Dalisa Pigram and Singaporeans Soultari Amin Farid and Zee Zunnur co-choreograph and perform, collaborating with Broome ex-pearl diver Ahmat Bin Fadal, visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah on set design and sound by composer Safuan Johari.

'Mutiara’s dance language draws on diasporic connections, Southeast Asian martial art silat, and Yawuru and Minangkabau dance forms, to interrogate a hidden history.

'Bones speak, seas change, ancestral beings feud and deep beneath the surface the pearl diver yearns for home. Mutiara celebrates resilience, love and the strength of ancestors.'

Source: Sydney Festival.

'Challenging, joyful and deeply affecting, Jurrungu Ngan-ga confronts Australia’s shameful fixation with incarceration in a powerful and provocative new dance work. Inspired by perspectives on incarceration, Jurrungu Ngan-ga reflects on the disgraceful disproportion of Indigenous Australians in custody and first-hand descriptions of life inside Australia’s immigration detention centres. Searing truths blend with dark humour, fear, sadness and courage to shine a light on new ways to resist and to empower us all to rewrite our future – together.' (Production summary)

'Mes chers amis,

'Some things cannot be said with words. It’s be written on our bodies. Etched into our skin, our movements, our voices. There are these invisible restraints holding us in place. There’s a space beyond this moment, we know there is. A space beyond this instability, beyond this frustration. We must reconfigure power and embrace a transmission of old and new knowledge.

'This award-winning production from one Australia’s leading dance companies at the forefront of Intercultural work will move, exhilarate and challenge audiences.

'Inspired by the ongoing series of New Caledonia’s referendums on independence from France and Australia’s decades of debate over Indigenous recognition and treaty, Le Dernier Appel explores the aftermaths of colonisation, seeking what to embrace of the new and what to let fall. While governments debate, peoples born of invasion, migration and displacement, wait for the new day.'

Source: Black Swan Theatre company.

'Cut the Sky is a new dance theatre work that explores the relationship between humanity and the environment from an indigenous point of view at a time of global environmental change.' (Marrugeku website)

'Gudirr Gudirr lights a path from broken past to fragile present, and on to a future still in the making. Gudirr Gudirr calls a warning, the guwayi bird calls when the tide is turning — to miss the call is to drown. An intimate solo dance and video work performed by Dalisa Pigram, daughter of Broome. By turns hesitant, restless, resilient and angry, Gudirr Gudirr lights a path from a broken past through a fragile present and on to a future still in the making.' (Source: Marrugeku website)

'It's Karaoke night, Broome style, where country meets hip hop meets Japanese love song. Closing time and the action moves to the streets, when a lone cowboy comes to town, stirring the town's ghosts and provoking a surreal collision of past and present.'

Source: Carriageworks website: http://www.carriageworks.com.au/

Sighted: 18/11/2009