Description
Telling That Story details twenty-five years of intercultural performance-making by renowned Australian dance company Marrugeku, whose restlessly inventive work reaches from remote Indigenous communities in northern Australia to international audiences around the world. This work began in the small Kunwinjku community of Kunbarlanja in Arnhem Land and now continues in Yawuru Country in the Western Australian coastal town of Broome and in the urban centre of Gadigal lands in Sydney.
The productions brought into dialogue for the first time in this book range in style from large-scale outdoor explorations of Kunwinjku spirit worlds to trans-disciplinary expressions of global ecological collapse to intimate dance solos on the theme of decolonization. Extending this significant body of work is an ongoing series of research laboratories, which functions as a key platform for strengthening dance in the Pacific region through trans-Indigenous exchange. Critical to the company’s success is its development of new choreographic and dramaturgical processes that are both intercultural and Indigenous in principle, practice and ethos. Such work draws on the experiences, stories and embodied practices of diverse artists, but is indelibly grounded in the specific places and communities where the day-to-day collaborations unfold.
Marrugeku’s unique artistic and cultural journey is traced here through a words-and-pictures story co-curated by leading postcolonial settler scholar Helen Gilbert and the company’s co-artistic directors: Yawuru/Bardi choreographer and dancer Dalisa Pigram and settler director Rachael Swain. A rich array of essays, scripts, interviews, photographs, reviews and reflections make up the story’s strands, each opening windows on the performances at issue. These contributions by company members, critics, scholars, collaborators and Indigenous leaders shed light on the processes of cultural attunement at the heart of Marrugeku’s work. Collectively, they offer a compelling multivocal assessment of the power and appeal of political dance theatre in our times.
Contents:
Foreword
Patrick Dodson
The Company
Helen Gilbert, Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain
Chapter 1
Marrugeku in Kunbarlanja
This Was Not a Fly-by-night Project, Michael Leslie
Making Mimi, Rachael Swain
Magic Followed Us, Raymond Blanco
Telling That Story, Thompson Yulidjirri
Children Are Sacred, Djon Mundine
Darwin’s Art of Darkness, Nicholas Rothwell
Chapter 2
Crossing Borders
From Stone Country to Saltwater Country: Dramaturg Peter Eckersall in Conversation with Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain
Marrugeku’s International Touring, Justin Macdonnell
Chapter 3
Burning Daylight
Revelation Found in Broad Daylight, Rosemary Sorensen
Tangled Histories, Haunted Streets: Asian–Indigenous Relations in Broome, Jacqueline Lo, with script excerpt ‘Black Flowers’
Strategic Obfuscation in Marrugeku’s Burning Daylight, Vicki van Hout
Chapter 4
Intercultural Music
Yarning about the Musical Journey: Musicians Matthew Fargher and Lorrae Coffin in Conversation with Dalisa Pigram
Sound and Song: Cultural Collaborations, Mathew Fargher
Chapter 5
Research 1: Decolonizing Dance
Trans-Indigenous and Intercultural Dance Praxis, Rachael Swain and Dalisa Pigram
Animal Pop: An Interview with Dancer/Choreographer Jecko Siompo
Taking Things into Your Own Hands: An Interview with Dancer/Choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly
The Unbearable Stasis of Colonialism, Alison Croggon
Chapter 6
Buru
Time/Land/Seasons/Place/Country, Dalisa Pigram
Buru script
Chapter 7
Gudirr Gudirr
A One-woman Dance Show of Evolving Aboriginal Repression, Martha Schabas
The Tide Is Turning: New Choreoaesthetics in Indigenous Intercultural Dance, Rachael Swain
with Dalisa Pigram
Script Excerpts: ‘Lingo Story’, ‘This Is the Time’, ‘Warning’ and ‘Uncle Fuck Fuck’
Cosmopolitan Encounters and Diplomatic Interventions, Helen Gilbert
Chapter 8
Research 2: Listening to Country
Traces in the Landscape, Rachael Swain
Hear the Country Speak to You: An Interview with Bunuba Cultural Leader June Oscar
Listening to Other Peoples’ Country, Hildegard de Vuyst
Listening to Country Forum: Selected Statements
Chapter 9
Cut the Sky
Cut the Sky Programme Notes
Unpredictable Shifts: Rehearsal Process and Climate Change, Rachael Swain, with script excerpts: ‘Crocodile Poem’, ‘Hanky Panky’ and ‘Nature Is on Speed’
Looking Back on Cut the Sky: An Interview with Dramaturg Hildegard de Vuyst
Chapter 10
Burrbgaja Yalirra
Critical Mimicry and the Deadman Dance: Marrugeku’s Burrbgaja Yalirra, Jonathan W. Marshall
Ngalimpa script
Script Excerpts: ‘Miranda Speaks’, ‘Language Poem’ and ‘Great Grandfather Poem’
Chapter 11
Jurrungu Ngan-ga
Horrific Surrealism: New Storytelling for Australia’s Carceral-Border Archipelago, Omid Tofighian
Chapter 12
Finding a Meeting Place
Future Thinking, Future Dancing: An Interview with Yawuru Cultural Leader Patrick Dodson
Seeing the Process, Rachael Swain and Dalisa Pigram in Conversation with Richard Gough
Timeline
Company Highlights 1996–2020
Credits
Marrugeku Productions and Research Laboratories
Author Biographies
