Image credit Tim Standing
The Reckoning
Image credit Emma Fishwick
by Joshua Pether Projects, Kalkadoon
The Reckoning is a durational performance ritual drawing upon the knowledges locked within the performer’s own body that are the result of our traumatic past history and this drives and moves the performance. Audiences are invited to ‘witness’ this event unfold whilst also allowing a sense of contemplation to occur in relation to our bloody and colonial history. At the heart of the reckoning is an understanding that we must acknowledge our traumatic past as a country and also create a way to move forward. The Reckoning also becomes a site specific work that will be performed across various sites of historical interest where past traumatic events have occurred.
The Reckoning is funded by Australia Council through Signature Works initiative. The Reckoning is supported by PICA and BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.
Bunyi Bunyi Bumi
Image by Priya Srinivasan
Directed by Priya Srinivasan (Tamil)
Co-Devised by Raymond Blanco (Yadhaigana, Mer; Erub, Zenadth Kes), Waangenga Blanco (Pajinka Wik and Meriam Mer), Alfira O'Sullivan (Acehnese/Australian), Murtala (Acehnese)
Produced by BlakDance
Commissioned by Asia TOPA and Bunjil Place
About the Work
Bunyi, Bunyi Bumi Sounds of the Earth asks what is possible when we listen deeply to the Earth Mother and explores the dire consequences when we do not.
What happens
when people don’t pay attention
when fish wash up on the shore
when people don’t run to safety
when the Earth Mother speaks softly
when a supreme being who has no mouth unleashes his fury on those who keep violating the Earth
when women have to multitask between domestic, motherly and artistic labour
when people’s songlines are ruptured, yet they find ways to gain access to the songs to recover their fragmented selves
when men find a way to heal each other by harmonising
When very different people syncopate to each other and to the Earth Mother. What is possible to heal and recover?
An immersive performance, the work explores these questions using Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islands and Acehnese stories woven from ancient songlines, mythological pasts, and anticolonial perspectives. Directors Priya Srinivasan (Tamil), Raymond Blanco (Yadhaigana and Mer; Erub, Zenadth Kes) and Waangenga Blanco (Pajinka Wik and Meriam Mer), together with Achenese knowledge and songkeepers Murtala and Alfira O’Sullivan (Acehnese/Australian) create a ground-breaking work incorporating dance, music, movement, text and body percussion.
Images from creative development January 2024, Dandenong
Bunyi Bunyi Bumi is produced by BlakDance, with commissioning support from Asia TOPA Festival and Bunjil Place.
SILENCE - 2024 Tour
SILENCE by Karul Projects
SILENCE is an urgent call for TREATY, highlighting the stories and struggles of Blak communities since colonisation. Through SILENCE, Karul Projects take their place in the lineage of fierce First Nations makers calling for Sovereignty.
Choreographed by Thomas E.S. Kelly, SILENCE is a powerful dance performance, featuring seven performers on a stage slowly engulfed in dirt, representing the call for Land Back.
Is this the Commonwealth of Australia? Yes? This is your Landlords speaking!
Through raw physicality, humorous skits, and a power anthem soundtrack, we disrupt the silence of a 250+ year struggle. The same questions echoed through generations. SILENCE pulls the Treaty conversation out from under the rug and slams it back on the table. Because the conversation about a TREATY cannot be silenced in Australia.
Funny and irreverent and reverberating with power… If you think you know Australian contemporary dance, you haven’t seen SILENCE. With thrashing live drumming and a raw aesthetic, Thomas E.S. Kelly has combined intimate storytelling with significant moments in Australian history as SILENCE interprets an ongoing conversation for a new generation.
There’s SILENCE between the stars as the Emu travels across the night sky. There’s SILENCE in the dancer’s energy when they hit the cut, the rupture between rhythms and movement creating a vibrational glitch for the spirit world to enter. It’s also the deafening SILENCE under White noise.
We have marched across our Country. We have had promises made and promises broken. We stand on a stage, to the beating of a live drum kit, as bodies thrash through white noise to continue the conversation. Towards action. Towards resolution.
Jhindu Lawrie’s audacious rock drumming full of dynamism, grunge and raw power calls back to Thomas E.S. Kelly’s choreography, in brash, yet vulnerable and visceral scenes, with Kelly’s trademark charm and wit interspersed in between.
Karul Projects is an emerging First Nations professional contemporary dance company based on Minjungbal Country, founded in 2017 by Thomas E.S. Kelly, Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu, and Taree Sansbury, Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri.
Image by Simon Woods
Tour dates and locations:
THE MAJ, Boorloo (1-2 MAY)
His Majesty’s Theatre (Perth)
1 & 2 May 2024
60min duration, no interval
Ages 12+
Water based haze, dirt, dust and strobe lighting will be used in this performance.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this show references people who have died.
About Karul Projects
Thomas E.S. Kelly and Taree Sansbury, met at NAISDA Dance College on the Central Coast of New South Wales in 2009. They have worked professionally together ever since, creating their own dance-theatre works, choreographing and performing for companies nationally. Thomas and Taree created Karul Projects in 2017, to create more opportunities for employment and skill building for First Nations artists.
Creatives / Cast:
Thomas E.S. Kelly (Choreographer/Writer/Performer) Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu
Taree Sansbury (Rehearsal Director/Performer) Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri
Vicki Van Hout (Choreographic Dramaturg) Wiradjuri
Alethea Beetson (Dramaturg) Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi and Wiradjuri
Jhindu-Pedro Lawrie (Percussion Composer/Performer) Mirning and Wuthathi
Benjin Maza (Performer) Yidindji, Birri Gubba, Meriam Mer and Tanna Island
Glory Tuohy-Daniell (Performer) Indjalandji-Dhidhanu and Alyewarre
Keia McGrady (Performer) Githabul Migunberri-Yugumbeh
Olivia Adams (Performer) Wulli Wulli
Tamara Bouman (Performer Understudy) Birpai
Sam Pankhurst (Music/Sound Designer)
Karen Norris (Lighting Designer)
Selene Cochrane (Costume Designer)
Header image by Gregory Lorenzutti
The national tour has received financial assistance from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
The Perth presentation is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland's Grow Market Development Fund.
SILENCE is produced by BlakDance. The premiere production in 2020 was co-commissioned by BlakDance, HOTA Home of the Arts, City of Gold Coast, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Brisbane Festival, with support by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The Other Side Of Me - WA / NT Tour
THE OTHER SIDE OF ME - Gary Lang NT DANCE COMPANY
Following the success of their 2022 show Waŋa, NT Dance Company offer a powerful, moving dance duet that navigates the limits of physical expression.
Image by Paz Tassone
The Other Side of Me by Gary Lang shares the tragedy of Stolen Generations through the heartbreaking story of one man stranded between two families, continents and cultures. This achingly intimate dance duet confronts the destruction wrought by Motherland and colony still felt by First Nations people, but offers the redemptive beauty of singing his spirit home.
West and Central Australia Tour locations 2024
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Saturday 27 April 7:30 PM
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as part of Red Earth Arts Festival - REAF 2024
Friday 10 May 8.00 PM
Dance Workshops:
Thursday 9 May 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Thursday 9 May 5:00 - 6:00 PM: ‘Join the Company’ intermediate-advanced dance workshop
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Friday 17 May 7:00 PM
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as part of Garrmalang Festival
Studio Theatre
Wednesday 22 May 7:00 PM
Thursday 23 May 7:00 PM
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Saturday 1 June 7:30 PM
About NT Dance Company
GARY LANG ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Born in Darwin, Larrakia man Gary Lang is a NAISDA graduate and alumnus of Bangarra and Dancenorth. Since 2002 Gary Lang has choreographed 9 seminal works in the Aboriginal dance canon, including GOOSE LAGOON, Mokuy, Waŋa (Spirit), Forbidden, Milnjiya, Milky Way' — River of Stars created with the Western Australian Ballet. In 2013, he was honoured with the distinguished Australia Council for the Arts’ Dance Board Fellowship.
Creatives / Artists:
Gary Lang (Choreographer) Larrakia
Josephine Crawshaw (Cultural Consultant) Kalkarindji
Jesse Norris (Cultural Consultant) Torres Strait Island descendent
Banula Marika (Cultural Consultant, Songman) Yolŋu
Erica McCallum (NT Dance Company General Manager)
Elizabeth Rogers (Project Manager)
Noelle Shader (Rehearsal Director)
Laura Fish (Co-Creator, Dramaturg, Writer)
Liz Pavey (Co-Creator, Dramaturg)
Chandler Connell (Performer) Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal
Alexander Abbot (Performer)
Tyrel Dulvarie (Performer - Margaret River + Perth) Yirrganydji
Janet Munyarryun (Voice Artist) Yolŋu
Samuel Pankhurst (Composer/Sound Designer)
Arian Pearson (Sound Designer) Yolŋu
Samuel James (Video Artist)
Joseph Mercurio (Lighting Designer)
Jennifer Irwin (Costume Designer)
BlakDance (Tour Producer)
The story is based on actual events. However, names, incidents and timelines have been changed for dramatic purposes. All characters depicted in the production are composites or fictitious. Any similarity to the original story, or of fictitious characters to an actual person, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional.
The Other Side of Me is produced by Gary Lang NT Dance Company with the tour produced by BlakDance. The national tour has received financial assistance from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
The production is a collaboration between Gary Lang NT Dance Company and Northumbria University, UK. It has received financial support through the Northern Territory Government, Regional Arts Australia, the British Council, Creative Australia, Brisbane Festival and Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
The work premiered in 2023 in Darwin Festival at the Darwin Entertainment Centre.
Dear Brother
Image supplied by Queensland Theatre
By Lenny Donahue, Djabuganjdji and Tibian Wyles, Girramay and Kalkadoon
Directed by Isaac Drandic, Noongar
THE RIGHT TO A RITE OF PASSAGE.
Young men from different corners of Queensland blow into the big smoke burning with unbridled energy, desire and confusion. Each of them filled with the need to escape, to make something of their lives, to defy the hand that life has dealt them. An individual ignition has driven them all to Brisbane but something else — something ancestral — will bring them together.
Caught between adolescence and adulthood, these young fellas will converge and wrestle with themselves, each other, their ghosts and a deep-etched sense of duty to Country. Together they’ll lay themselves bare and bond as brothers over what it means to be a young Aboriginal man in 2024.
This high energy work, presented with BlakDance as part of Brisbane Festival, is all about giving today’s young Murri men a voice, one that challenges the narrative around public perceptions of Aboriginal masculinity.
Using dance, music and poetry, this form-defying work features Djabuganjdji man Lenny Donahue and Girramay and Kalkadoon man Tibian Wyles in a tour-de-force performance that is as physical as it is heartfelt.
Premiering September 2024
Dates 7 — 28 Sep
Location Bille Brown Theatre
Dear Bother is co-produced by BlakDance, with Queensland Theatre
Garabari
by Joel Bray Dance, Wiradjuri
Garabari means Corroboree in Wiradjuri and will be a large-scale new work by Wiradjuri choreographer Joel Bray in co-production with CHUNKY MOVE, Victoria’s leading contemporary dance company. The Wiradjuri are called The People of the Three Rivers and Garabari will be a contemporary Corroboree celebrating rivers as the veins of Country and as the ancient songlines and trade routes that have always connected the many Peoples of this continent. The work will be developed over a series of creative developments in Melbourne and out on Wiradjuri Country.
“This work has been appearing in my dreams. Sometimes it is a series of pilgrimages through manicured gardens, sometimes it is a massive rave in a warehouse, sometimes it is a collection of canoes on the river with the audience watching from the riverbank. Sometimes it is on the stage. Perhaps it will happen in all of these places.“ - Joel Bray
Garabari is funded by Australia Council through Signature Works initiative. Garabari is supported by BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.
swim
Image by Jade Ellis Photography
swim by Ellen van neerven, Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage
Creative development, march 2023
In March 2023, BlakDance, Griffin Theatre Company (co-producers), QPAC and HOTA supported a creative development of Ellen van Neerven’s new project swim – a movement performance poem on Australian swimming, the sovereignty of water, and the strength of culture and family in keeping us safe.
This development period included time for the creative team on Yugambeh Country and a studio development period in Meanjin/Brisbane, and introduced the movement/choreographic element into the project with movement director, Yolande Brown.
Freestyle, butterfly, breaststroke, blakstroke, swim is a performance poem on Australian swimming, the sovereignty of water and the strength of culture and family in keeping us safe, told by a young genderqueer Murri ready to hit the fast lane at the local pool. Is e’s Aunt the lifesaver they need right now, or is that sexy DJ spinning tracks over the pool’s PA, the PLI (potential love interest) that is gonna keep e afloat? swim is a reflection on Blak queerness and decolonisation.
Creative team
(March 2023 Creative Development)
Playwright: Ellen van Neerven
Director: Andrea James
Dramaturg: Bryan Andy
Choreography: Yolande Brown
Sound/composition: Brendon Boney
Performer: Dani Sibosado
Performer: Hannah Donnelly
Elder: Jenny Fraser
Elder: Maria Van Neerven
Community Liaison: Hannah Scanlon (QPAC)
Stage Managers: Abbie Trott and Callie Roebuck
swim is a co-production of Griffin Theatre Company and BlakDance.
This project was first developed by Moogahlin Performing Arts through the Yellamundie Festival 2019. Script development in 2020 by Moogahlin Performing Arts, with the support of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. Creative developments have received support from Malcolm Robertson Foundation, and Erin Shiel and Robert Dick and continued support from Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
swim is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
SILENCE - Touring Nationally
SILENCE by Karul Projects
SILENCE is an urgent call for TREATY, highlighting the stories and struggles of Blak communities since colonisation. Through SILENCE, Karul Projects take their place in the lineage of fierce First Nations makers calling for Sovereignty.
Choreographed by Thomas E.S. Kelly, SILENCE is a powerful dance performance, featuring seven performers on a stage slowly engulfed in dirt, representing the call for Land Back.
Dynamic live percussion drives the dancers' exploration of past, present, alternate realities and dreamscapes of the milky way and Murun, the emu in the sky.
Karul Projects is an emerging First Nations professional contemporary dance company based on Minjungbal Jogan, founded in 2017 by Thomas E.S. Kelly, Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu, and Taree Sansbury, Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri.
Image by Simon Woods
Tour dates and locations
SILENCE is about the space in between. The conversations not being heard and the responses that are muted. Through the beating of a drum, bodies thrash through frequencies to uncover what lies in the SILENCE.
There’s SILENCE between the stars as the Emu travels across the night sky. There’s SILENCE in the dancer’s energy when they hit the cut, the rupture between rhythms and movement enabling a vibrational glitch where the spirit world can enter. It’s also the deafening SILENCE under white noise. The same questions echoed through generations.
“We have marched across Country. We have had promises made and promises broken. In SILENCE we pull the unresolved conversations from under the rug and slam them back on the table. Because the conversation about a TREATY will never be silenced.”
60min duration, no interval
Ages 12+
Water based haze and strobe lighting will be used in this performance.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this show references people who have died.
About Karul Projects
Thomas E.S. Kelly and Taree Sansbury, met at NAISDA Dance College on the Central Coast of New South Wales in 2009. They have worked professionally together ever since, creating their own dance-theatre works, choreographing and performing for companies nationally. Thomas and Taree created Karul Projects in 2017, to create more opportunities for employment and skill building for First Nations artists.
Creatives / Cast:
Thomas E.S. Kelly (Choreographer/Writer/Performer) Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu
Taree Sansbury (Rehearsal Director/Performer) Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri
Vicki Van Hout (Choreographic Dramaturg) Wiradjuri
Alethea Beetson (Dramaturg) Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi and Wiradjuri
Benjin Maza (Performer) Yidindji, Birri Gubba, Meriam Mer and Tanna Island
Keia McGrady (Performer) Githabul Migunberri-Yugumbeh
Glory Tuohy-Daniell (Performer) Indjalandji-Dhidhanu and Alyewarre
Olivia Adams (Performer) Wulli Wulli
Jhindu-Pedro Lawrie (Percussion Composer/Performer) Mirning and Wuthathi
Sam Pankhurst (Music/Sound Designer)
Karen Norris (Lighting Designer)
Selene Cochrane (Costume Designer)
The national tour has received financial assistance from the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
SILENCE is produced by BlakDance. The premiere production in 2020 was co-commissioned by BlakDance, HOTA Home of the Arts, City of Gold Coast, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Brisbane Festival, with support by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
SILENCE - Queensland Tour
SILENCE by Karul Projects
SILENCE is an urgent call for TREATY, highlighting the stories and struggles of Blak communities since colonisation. Through SILENCE, Karul Projects take their place in the lineage of fierce First Nations makers calling for Sovereignty.
Choreographed by Thomas E.S. Kelly, SILENCE is a powerful dance performance, featuring seven performers on a stage slowly engulfed in dirt, representing the call for Land Back.
Dynamic live percussion drives the dancers' exploration of past, present, alternate realities and dreamscapes of the milky way and Murun, the emu in the sky.
Karul Projects is an emerging First Nations professional contemporary dance company based on Minjungbal Jogan, founded in 2017 by Thomas E.S. Kelly, Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu, and Taree Sansbury, Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri.
Image by Simon Woods
Tour dates and locations
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Proserpine Entertainment Centre, Proserpine (9 September) (digital presentation) Giya
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SILENCE is about the space in between. The conversations not being heard and the responses that are muted. Through the beating of a drum, bodies thrash through frequencies to uncover what lies in the SILENCE.
There’s SILENCE between the stars as the Emu travels across the night sky. There’s SILENCE in the dancer’s energy when they hit the cut, the rupture between rhythms and movement enabling a vibrational glitch where the spirit world can enter. It’s also the deafening SILENCE under white noise. The same questions echoed through generations.
“We have marched across Country. We have had promises made and promises broken. In SILENCE we pull the unresolved conversations from under the rug and slam them back on the table. Because the conversation about a TREATY will never be silenced.”
60min duration, no interval
Ages 12+
Water based haze and strobe lighting will be used in this performance.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this show contains depictions of people who have died.
About Karul Projects
Thomas E.S. Kelly (Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu man), and Taree Sansbury (Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri), met at NAISDA Dance College on the Central Coast of New South Wales in 2009. They have worked professionally together ever since, creating their own dance-theatre works, choreographing and performing for companies nationally. Thomas and Taree created Karul Projects in 2017, to create more opportunities for employment and skill building for First Nations artists.
Creators / Artists:
Thomas E.S. Kelly (Choreographer/Writer/Performer) Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu
Taree Sansbury (Rehearsal Director/Performer) Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjerri
Vicki Van Hout (Choreographic Dramaturg) Wiradjuri
Alethea Beetson (Dramaturg) Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi and Wiradjuri
Amber Nofal (Performer)
Benjin Maza (Performer) Yidindji, Birri Gubba, Miriam Mer and Tanna Island
Edan Porter (Performer) Gomeroi
Kiara Malcolm (Performer) Gija and Ngāti Hauā
Tiana Pinnell (Performer)
Jhindu-Pedro Lawrie (Percussion Composer/Performer) Mirning and Wuthathi
Sam Pankhurst (Music/Sound Designer)
Karen Norris (Lighting Designer)
Selene Cochrane (Costume Designer)
The Queensland tour received financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland’s Touring Queensland Fund. The support of touring funds assists significant employment of Queensland First Nations creatives and enables the struggle of colonial histories to be shared across Queensland to audiences in regional communities.
SILENCE is produced by BlakDance. The premiere production was co-commissioned by BlakDance, HOTA Home of the Arts, City of Gold Coast, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Brisbane Festival, with support by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The Complication of Lyrebirds
by Jasmin Sheppard, Tagalaka and Kurtitjar
Date Premiered: January 2021
The Complication of Lyrebirds is a 55 minute First Nations contemporary dance work designed to break away from the social expectations of what it means to look or sound Aboriginal.
What if colonisation denied your family access to their culture? What then makes you Aboriginal? The lyrebird adopts the calls of others to appear attractive, yet there is an authentic identity to the bird that is no mere mimic.
Jasmin Sheppard (Choreographer) and Kaine Sultan Babij (Co-Collaborator) perform on stage with a 3 projector setup. The history of the White Australia Policy is re-contextualised as choreographic tools with other media; evocative voice overs, highly detailed props and video projection, from a team of brilliant creatives Carly Sheppard (Dramaturg), Naretha Williams (Sound), Cris Derksen (Composer), Samuel James (Video), Karen Norris (Lighting), Emily Adolfini (Props) and Fiona Holley (Costume).
Artist-led education programs alongside presentations introduce students to Indigenous choreographic processes with learning around dance appreciation, performance and composition. Post Show Q&A and forums are offered to create a discussion about the diverse themes of the work.
The work premiered at Sydney Festival 2021 in conjunction with Campbelltown Arts Centre, and Native Earth Theatre Company, Toronto.
The creative development and premiere of the work was supported by Campbelltown Arts Centre.
This powerful First Nations dance show is a thoughtful highlight of Sydney Festival 2021. The Complication of Lyrebirds asks us to acknowledge that all First Nations people are unique, that they have their own journey to follow and histories to draw upon.
STEPHEN A RUSSELL, Time Out 2020
Images by Sam James.
Jasmin Sheppard is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and director, a Tagalaka Aboriginal woman with Irish, Chinese and Hungarian ancestry. She spent 12 years with Bangarra Dance Theatre, her performance acclaimed by critics as “powerfully engaging, fluent dexterity” (Sydney Morning Herald). Jasmin choreographed a major work for the company ‘MACQ’, which toured Australia and Germany. In 2012 Jasmin was nominated for an Australian Dance award for ‘Best Female Contemporary Dancer’. In 2017 ‘MACQ’ was nominated for a Helpmann Award for best dance work as a part of ‘OUR Land People Stories’ and in 2018 received a Helpmann for best regional touring program. Other works include ‘No Remittance’ for Legs on the Wall and ‘Choice Cut’ for Yirramboi festival, which debuted at Toronto’s ‘Fall For Dance North’ Festival 2019. Jasmin premiered her main stage production ‘The Complication of Lyrebirds’ at Sydney Festival 2021 and in 2021 also co-directed ‘Value For Money’ alongside Sara Black for GUTS Dance, receiving rave reviews with seasons at Araluen Arts Centre and Darwin Festival. Jasmin created ‘Given Unto Thee’ for Sydney Dance Company’s 2021 New Breed program and was performer, movement director and associate writer for S Shakthidharan’s: 宿 (stay), presented by Sydney Festival 2022 in partnership with OzAsia. Her work is passionate, political and described as “surreal and highly evocative” (The Australian). Jasmin Sheppard is supported by BlakDance, established in 2005, a national industry and producing organisation for First Nations contemporary dancers and choreographers.
Weredingo by Karul - Premiere 2021
Weredingo is the fifth full-length work by Karul Projects, the Queensland-based First Nations contemporary dance company led by Thomas E.S. Kelly (Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri an Ni-Vanuatu), and Taree Sansbury (Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjeri). The work premiere at Brisbane Festival 2021.
Image Credit: Mick Richards
Choreographers Thomas E.S. Kelly and Taree Sansbury started a multifaceted approach to the subject of shape-shifting four years ago, commencing with a mockumentary and performance in Sydney at PACT, which interviewed people who revealed that they have other, animal selves.
The first development ‘conjured everyday fantasies of transformation and then moved on to something more serious: dance performance imbued, at first impressionistically and then quite specifically, with First Nations cultural shapeshifting’. Keith Gallasch REALTIME.
Over the next few years, the creative developments took place back on Karul’s homelands, as the company relocated back to the Gold Coast (2018).
Further creative developments began to further explore the work from a narrative and text based perspective. The original pitch to Brisbane Festival was that the work would be mostly text based theatre, of which this has undergone its own shapeshifting journey to now include animations and projections by Studio Gilay (who animated Cooked) shot at Wirrim Studio on the Gold Coast.
Lighting and production is being done by an all Indigenous team: Chloe Ogilvie (trained by Mark Howett) has managed to safely cross borders from WA and is plotting the lighting now, dramaturgy is happening largely over zoom with highly accomplished director, actor and playwright Isaac Drandic (who worked on Jacob Boehme’s Blood on the Dance Floor) and Mamu man Simon Cook holds the ship steady as the BlakDance Production Manager.
Add in sound design by Sam Pankhurst and lifelike animal costumes by the talented Selene Cochrane and the work boasts incredible production values and high quality design. A surprising addition to the cast is Grayson Millwood from The Farm (Throttle).
Weredingo was the first of BlakDance’s produced works to undertake a new model for feedback on a work in development through BlakForm. The Critical Response Process (CRP) was a facilitated process that allowed the makers to question their work in open dialogues with industry and community leaders. We were delighted to undertake this initiative earlier this year with Joyce Rosario, a first-generation Canadian of Filipina descent, privileged to live on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Brisbane Festival
Previews 3 & 4 September, Opening Night 7th, until 11 September, 2021
Weredingo is the fifth full-length work by Karul, an emerging Queensland-based First Nations contemporary dance company led by Thomas E.S. Kelly (Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu), and Taree Sansbury (Kaurna, Narrunga and Ngarrindjeri).
Weredingo is about shapeshifting. It's about universal stories of First Nations creationism and the history beneath shapeshifting, stories far older than familiar western tropes. Weredingo is also about duality, cleverly utilising the metaphor of shapeshifting to reveal tokenism, blackfishing, racial profiling and allyship. This powerful dance theatre work combines Karul's distinctive contemporary choreography with narrative storytelling, animation and projection for a thrilling and interactive dance experience.
Director/Choreographer Thomas E.S. Kelly
Rehearsal Director/Performer Taree Sansbury
Performers Benjin Maza and Grayson Millwood
Costume Designer Selene Cochrane
Sound Designer Sam Pankhurst
Lighting Designer Chloe Ogilvie
Dramaturg Isaac Drandic
Animation Studio Gilay
Videography Wirrim Studio
Producer BlakDance
Weredingo was produced by BlakDance and supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the City of Gold Coast, the City of Melbourne through Arts House, and was developed in the CultureLAB program with the assistance of Creative Victoria. Weredingo has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and Queensland Theatre. Weredingo is commissioned by BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.
On the Shoulders of Giants
Images by Simon Woods, 2021
by eXcelsior
eXcelsior is an intra-cultural Queensland First Nations dance collective made up of proud Murri and Torres Strait Islander artists based in Brisbane. Featuring Leonard Donahue, Benjin Maza, Benjamin Creek, Tibian Wyles, Manduway Dutton and Joshua Thaiday. Anchored in body based storytelling, they use art forms including cultural and contemporary dance, physical theatre and poetry, to express their intergenerational experiences.
Their new work in development, On The Shoulders Of Giants reveals a journey of transition and adaptation through the eyes of First Nation males navigating the vulnerabilities behind mental health, shame, toxic masculinity, domestic issues and drug and alcohol abuse. “By keeping our culture strong we stay grounded, allowing us to get through the pressures of everyday life as a First Nations man”.
eXcelsior’s On The Shoulders of Giants has been developed through BlakDance Residency Program, and Performing Country.
eXcelsior in their second creative development for new work On The Shoulders of Giants. Big shout out to Metro Arts and collaborators Lafe Charlton, Dimple Bani Jr and Zaimon Vilmanis.
In the third creative development period, artists Tibian Wyles (Warragamay & Kalkadoon) and Lenny Donahue (Djabugandji) worked on a script development with dramaturg Isaac Drandic, supported by Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Powerhouse over 2022.
Images from Simon Woods of Lenny Donahue, Tibian Wyles, Joshua Thaiday (3 of the eXcelsior 6).
On The Shoulders of Giants is developed through BlakDance’s Performing Country - Queensland, financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland’s Backing Indigenous Arts and First Nations Commissioning Fund, developed with assistance of Metro Arts and supported by Brisbane Powerhouse and Queensland Theatre.
Preparing Ground
Preparing Ground
By Marilyn Miller (Kukuyalanji and Waanyi), Jasmin Sheppard (Tagalaka and Kurtitjar) & Katina Olsen (Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri).
Preparing Ground is a powerful First Nations-led independent contemporary dance project by leading choreographers Marilyn Miller, Jasmin Sheppard and Katina Olsen.
Employing a framework founded on a deep relationship between humans and environment, Preparing Ground is an urgent call to action to us all to address colonisation’s impacts on Country, language, people and place through First Nations knowledges.
It will feature a dance work for mainstage presentation alongside audience engagement activities chosen and led by local First Nations knowledge holders to platform local responses to the project’s themes.
Preparing Ground is currently in creative development.
About preparing ground
Preparing Ground means to prepare land for our future survival. It is about preparing land for Ceremony, preparing us with the knowledge to survive, and preparing community to lead change into the future Future. It’s a multidimensional metaphor that challenges postcolonial ethics, morality, politics and emotions, through the lens of Country.
Preparing Ground - the future Future
Developing the phrase “future-Future”, Preparing Ground takes on the longevity of Indigenous worldview. It acknowledges that taking care of Country and Community means continuing the work far into the future, over thousands of years – part of a continuum of knowledge, since the first sunrise.
Repeatedly returning to their Wakka Wakka, Kukuyalanji, Tagalaka and Kombumerri homelands over three years (2021-2023), these artists nurture long-term cultural exchange, listening to and learning from Country to engage with millennia of knowledge in land management and cultural survival. This deep research and development connects and reconnects the choreographers to the complexity of relationships between each other and their Countries in a never ending cycle of being, knowing and doing.
It is a contemporary application of ancient protocols; a process of belonging and becoming.
This experience then infuses and provokes responses in their choreographic language as they devise an immersive, multi-sensory dance production together with a wider creative team. The project’s process-driven, relational approach also deeply informs its long-term model of community engagement, which aims to support it’s core goal of platforming local First Nations voices and knowledges through its presentation.
Preparing Ground does more than embody the resilience of the world’s oldest surviving culture. It shows us how dependent our collective survival is on an enduring connection to land and sea.
Watch the Community Engagement pilot - Kombumerri Country, October 2023 (trailer)
"There is a stronger elemental guidance influencing movement and how the body responds to Country that comes from such close association with, or being on, Country… It has been an extremely rewarding, renewing, and reinvigorating process. The realisation encapsulated as: 'we ARE Country'; we present the voice OF Country." Marilyn Miller, Co-Director Preparing Ground
“Working on Country or being connected to Country has been the springboard from where every concept, creative ideas and information which makes the bulk of our content has come from. It has informed the decolonized process of our creative development in the studio.” Jasmin Sheppard, Co-Director Preparing Ground
"Preparing Ground cannot happen without dedicated time on Country. Having this time researching and developing on Country means that our communities are involved in the making of our work right from the beginning and throughout the process of making the work. Therefore we are honouring our own protocol and duty to our communities, and the voice of community is then reflected in the work." Katina Olsen, Co-Director Preparing Ground
Image credits: Samuel James, Katina Olsen, Jade Ellis Photography
Community Engagement pilot images feature Kombumerri Rangers from Ngarang-Wal Gold Coast Aboriginal Association Incorporated
Preparing Ground - Creative Team
Co-Director - Marilyn Miller (Kukuyalanji and Waanyi),
Co-Director - Jasmin Sheppard (Tagalaka and Kurtitjar)
Co-Director - Katina Olsen (Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri)
Projection Designer - Samuel James
Sound Designer - Samuel Pankhurst
Lighting Designer - Karen Norris
Dramaturg - Victoria Hunt (Ngati Ohomairangi, Te Arawa, Ngati Kahungunu, Rongowhakaata Maori, English, Irish, Finnish)
Dancer - Audrey Goth-Towney (Wiradjuri)
Choreographic Outside Eyes
Tammi Gissell (Muruwarri)
Yolande Brown (Bidjara)
Raymond Blanco (Magarem, Erub Island and Malay) - Cairns, 2021.
Cultural Advisors (on Country developments 2021 - 23)
Kukuyalanji / Mossman: Uncle John Hartley and Juan Walker
Tagalaka / Croydon: Patrick Wheeler and Victor Steffenson
Wakka Wakka / Eidsvold: Aunty Yvonne Chapman, Warru Olsen, Natalie Chapman, Corey Appo
Kombumerri / Gold Coast: Warru Olsen, Justine Dillon, Maxwell Dillon
Elders-in-Residence
Brisbane 2021: Raelene Baker (Yuggera, Birri, Bindal and Warranghu)
Preparing Ground is supported through the Australian Government’s Indigenous Languages and Arts program. It is assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative, managed by the Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with Brisbane Festival and Sydney Festival, and additional project funding from the Creative Australia. Preparing Ground is also supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, and the Council of the City of Gold Coast.
Preparing Ground is produced by BlakDance and supported by BlakForm, funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.
The 2023 creative development phase has received additional support from Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), The Art House Wyong, HOTA (Home of the Arts), Bulimba-ja Arts Centre, The Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) which is a partnership between the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and Sunshine Coast Council through ArtsCoast, and LJ Dance Projects.
September 2021’s creative development has been supported by Brisbane Powerhouse, Judith Wright Arts Centre, QPAC, The Art House Wyong and Ausdance Queensland.
Weredingo
by Karul Projects
When something is not understood, fear, hatred and humour can arise. Shapeshifting for First Nations people is our past, present and future. As our bodies shift through the space we draw parallels to Black Lives Matter, Black Deaths in Custody and the many injustices for people in this country who shapeshift on a daily basis to not be killed.
Weredingo investigates the practice of shapeshifting throughout the modern world. Through Karul’s signature sharp movement, text, song and projection, we reveal superhuman shapeshifting. Human forms turn animal and return to the land. From our Dreaming to the now First Nations people are descendants of, and continue to be, shapeshifters.
Karul developed Weredingo across 2018-2020 through support from Dancenorth (2018), Metro Arts (2019), PACT (2019), Arts House’s CultureLAB (2020).
Weredingo undertook creative development in May 2021 at The Farm, Gold Coast which included an industry and Community Sharing.
Weredingo was the first of BlakDance’s produced works to undertake a new model for feedback on a work in development through BlakForm. The Critical Response Process (CRP) was a facilitated process that allowed the makers to question their work in open dialogues with industry and community leaders. We were delighted to undertake this initiative earlier this year with Joyce Rosario, a first-generation Canadian of Filipina descent, privileged to live on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Weredingo is produced by BlakDance and is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the City of Gold Coast, the City of Melbourne through Arts House, and was developed in the CultureLAB program with the assistance of Creative Victoria. Weredingo has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and Queensland Theatre. Weredingo is commissioned by BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.