SMOKE

SMOKE

Image Credit: Tajette O'Halloran & Kirk Page

SMOKE is a First Nations, intercultural dance–theatre work in development, co-created by Kirk Page and Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal. 

This creative development took place in November 2025 on Bundjalung Country.

Ignited by Mununjali Yugambeh and Mataram Javanese cultural knowledge systems, SMOKE follows smoke as a spirit vessel - witness to the offerings humans make and keeper of what rises from fire. Moving between ceremony and performance, it explores smoke as a force of warning, healing and renewal, drifting between the earthly and spiritual realms.

Bodies become living terrain - earth and breath entwined. Images surface and dissolve: ash, skin, spirit. Beneath it all, grief, endurance and a desire for freedom quietly burn.

SMOKE traces the experience of brown bodies raised by white mothers, entering the fragile terrain of home - where the body is both archive and altar, carrying memory that shifts like smoke.

From what fire were we first breathed into being -

and where does the smoke of our lives travel when the flames grow quiet?

CREATIVE TEAM

Co-Creator - Kirk Page, Munanjali, Badu Island in the Torres Strait

Co-Creator - Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, Javanese-Australian

Performer - Katina Olsen, Wakka Wakka/Kombumerri

Performer - Wayne Blair

Performer - Stuart Shugg

Performer - Glory Tuohy-Daniel, Indjalandji-Dhidhanu and Alyewarre

Design Consultant - Joey Ruigrok

Sound Designer - Anna Liebzeit

Sound Designer - Ria Soemardjo

Visual Artist - Aris Prabawa

Produced by Arts Northern Rivers and co-commissioned by BlakDance

Bukuminkum

Bukuminkum Creative Development 2024 image by Paz Tassone

Bukuminkum, face forgotten in Yolŋgu Matha, is an Indigenous Australian contemporary work inspired by Giselle's Second Act, created by Gary Lang, Artistic Director of NT Dance Company in collaboration with Banula Marika. Arising from the real-life story of a celebrated First Nations dancer and pioneer, the work reveals betrayal after being cast off by colleagues and family and honouring their resilience.

“We, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike, have a tendency to honour our people and their journeys after they have passed away but Bukuminkum is about remembering and honouring our people while they are still with us. Teaching our youth about the legacy that came before them and carved the path that they can travel now. “

- Gary Lang, Artistic Director Gary Lang NT Dance Company

A large-scale production, the creative development phase will focus on music composition, dramaturgy, and choreography, extending Lang’s signature Larrakia style in collaboration with Banula Marika with traditional manikay (song) and buŋgul (dance).

CREATIVE TEAM

Artistic Director and Choreographer: Gary Lang (Larrakia)

Cultural Advisor and Custodian: Banula Marika (Yolŋu)

Sound Composition: Sam Pankhurst

Rehearsal Director: Noelle Shader

IMAGE CREDITS

Sound Development 2025 images supplied by BlakDance

Creative Development 2024 images by Paz Tassone

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government's Major Festivals Initiative, managed by Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., commissioned by Darwin Festival and Sydney Festival, and produced by BlakDance.

Bukuminkum is supported by Plus1 funding from Creative Australia, Gary Lang NT Dance Company donors, The Australian Ballet, The West Australian Ballet.

The 2024 development was supported by Miku Performing Arts and the Australian Government's Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.

Projects grant Creative Australia

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.

Dear Brother

Image by Zaimon Vimanis

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.

Dear Bother is co-produced by BlakDance, with Queensland Theatre

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.

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.