DNA DANCE: SCIENCE MEETS STORYTELLING & LEGACY BECOMES MOVEMENT

DNA DANCE: SCIENCE MEETS STORYTELLING & LEGACY BECOMES MOVEMENT

Choreographer and creative pioneer raymond d blanco has returned to his birthplace of Gurambilbarra (Townsville) to undertake the creative development of a powerful new dance work that traces the intersections of DNA, family, spirituality, memory and legacy.  

SHOWING: 1.30pm, Tuesday 28 July 2026 at Dancenorth Australia, 188-210 Stanley Street, Gurambilbarra (Townsville) 

Produced by BlakDance and supported through the Australian Government's Indigenous Languages and Arts program and Dancenorth Australia through their Artist Residency in the Tropics (A.R.T.) Program, the work marks a full-circle moment for Blanco, as the only one of his siblings born in Gurambilbarra (Townsville). For Blanco, this development is both homecoming and heartfelt thank you to Dancenorth, the organisation that first gave him the space to transform years of personal reflection into a living creative work.  

““This project has lived inside me for a long time,” Blanco said.

”Coming back to Townsville and working with Dancenorth has allowed me to finally explore it properly. This is my way of saying thank you to the place where I began, and to the people who believed in this story.”
”

— raymond blanco

Current Development

This work is an embodied exploration of Blanco’s genealogy,  inherited memory and cultural identity. The project asks profound questions about what is passed through generations - not only through blood, but through responsibility, belief, lived experiences and love.  An intimate reflection and retrospective on a life spanning decades of artistic practice, spiritual searching and personal growth.

At the heart is a deeply personal exploration of  Blanco's Torres Strait Islander, Aboriginal, Filipino, Malaysian and Jamaican ancestry, alongside his family's long relationship with Christianity, cultural practice and identity. Through movement, he reflects on the idea of legacy and the invisible contracts carried through generations, ultimately asking; what do we inherit and what do we choose to carry forward?

““I’ve spent my life creating work for others. This is the first time I’m really turning the mirror back on myself and asking, ‘How did I get here? Who am I now? What do I leave behind?’”
”

— raymond blanco

A defining feature of the development is the cast itself. Four dancers from Raymond’s bloodline appear in the work, including his nephew/son, Waangenga and Blanco's granddaughter, Cairns based Brianna Kemmerling, creating a rare intergenerational collaboration where artistic practice and family history become inseparable.  

For his granddaughter, Brianna, the experience carries deep personal significance. 

““It’s an honour, and a rarity, to be given the opportunity to dance a story representing my own family lineage. To be taught and to create alongside my grandfather is something incredibly special.

We’re not only connected through blood, but through our shared artistic practice, our kinship and our family history.”
”

— Brianna Kemmerling

By placing his own family on stage, Blanco invites audiences into a story that is deeply  personal yet encourages contemplation of universal questions about belonging, identity and inheritance.  

The creative development also honours the artistic communities that have shaped Blanco throughout his career. Family members, collaborators and generations of artists contribute  to a work that celebrates both the strength of kinship and the enduring power of dance as  cultural legacy.  

Marilyn Miller and Luke Daniel Peacock bring generations of creative excellence to the project. Marilyn Miller, Raymond D. Blanco’s lifelong creative collaborator and dance family, contributes her extensive cultural knowledge and artistic expertise, while acclaimed singer-songwriter and producer Luke Daniel Peacock, Raymond’s cousin, is creating the original soundscape and musical composition that underpins the work’s emotional and cultural journey.

As the work continues to evolve, Blanco hopes audiences will be inspired to reflect on their own stories; he says:

““I want people to look at themselves. We all carry histories. We all carry family. This work is about stripping everything back and asking, ‘What has brought me to this moment? & what is relevant to my future’”
”

— raymond blanco

The development taking place at Dancenorth marks the next stage of a work that promises  to be one of Blanco's most personal and ambitious creations to date—where science meets story, DNA meets dance, and legacy becomes movement. 

---

Creative Team

Choreographer: raymond d blanco

Creative Collaborator: Marilyn Miller

Sound Design: Luke Daniel Peacock

Cast (Townsville Development): Aba Bero, Brianna Kemmerling, Harlisha Newie-Joe, Tameeka Cora, Tessarna Cora.

Produced by: BlakDance

Supported by: Dancenorth, ART Program
Funded by: Ministry of Arts

---

Untitled Pressure Project

Untitled Pressure Project

A visceral interdisciplinary performance exploring how pressure is carried through bodies, relationships and systems within contemporary Australian life.

Untitled Pressure Project (UPP) is a major new work by Tagalaka artist Carly Sheppard, produced by BlakDance.

Developed through BlakDance's BlakForm program and supported by Arts House from its earliest stages, the work has evolved into an ambitious interdisciplinary performance combining dance, text, sound and sculptural installation.

Following the acclaimed premiere of The Shepherds at RISING 2026, Sheppard turns her attention from the myths that shape Australia to the pressures that define contemporary life. UPP emerges from a moment of profound social, political and environmental uncertainty. As humanity confronts intersecting crises of belonging, surveillance, inequality and ecological instability, the work asks how these forces are carried in the body and lived through everyday experience.

UPP explores how pressure accumulates across everyday life. Moving through experiences of isolation, surveillance, policing, class and belonging, the work examines how structural forces are carried within the body and lived through relationships to self, community and nation.

Through repetition, fragmentation and escalating emotional intensity, UPP builds a charged performance language where movement and text collide, narratives fracture and reform, and tension becomes physical. Drawing on dance, text, sound and sculptural installation, the work creates a shifting landscape where personal experience and collective conditions become inseparable.

Throughout 2026, UPP is being developed through a series of intensive creative residencies at Arts House, bringing together collaborators across choreography, dramaturgy, design and performance to test and refine the work's evolving form. The project is progressing toward future presentation and touring opportunities as a large-scale ensemble work.

UPP marks a significant expansion of Sheppard's artistic practice and reflects BlakDance's ongoing commitment to supporting ambitious First Nations-led contemporary performance.

““Artists have always held a mirror up to the world around them. Right now we’re living through a period of enormous uncertainty and pressure. I’m interested in how those forces become embodied — how they shape our relationships, our sense of self, and our ability to imagine different futures.””

— Carly Sheppard

Current Development

UPP is currently in creative development, with residencies taking place throughout 2026 at Arts House in Melbourne. The project continues to bring together artists from across performance, design and dramaturgy to develop the work's interdisciplinary form and future presentation pathways.

Creative Team

Lead Artist: Carly Sheppard

Creative Collaborator: Kamarra Bell-Wykes

Producer: BlakDance

Further creative collaborators and performers will join the project throughout the 2026 development process.

---

Image Credit: Jody Haines

---

Acknowledgements

Untitled Pressure Project is a new work by Carly Sheppard for A Daylight Connection, co-commissioned by Arts House, City of Melbourne, and BlakDance, and produced by BlakDance.

The 2026 creative development is supported by Arts House and BlakDance through Mangrove, an initiative of Arts Queensland.

Earlier concept development was supported through BlakForm, a BlakDance initiative funded by the Australian Government's Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund.

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, Mabuiag 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 by Gary Lang - Creative Development - WAB 2025 - Image credit Edify Media

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.

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

““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

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

CREATIVE TEAM

Gary Lang (Larrakia) - Director / Choreographer

Banula Marika (Rirratjingu clan, Yolngu) - Cultural Consultant / Songman

Serene Yunupingu (Boorooberongal clan of the Dharug Nation and the Gumatj Clan, Yolngu) - Cultural Consultant 

Noelle Shader - Rehearsal Director / Dramaturg

Evie Ferris (Taribelang, South Sea Islander) - Lead Performer

Alex Abbot - Lead Performer

Claire Voss - Lead Performer 

Wren Milera (Aboriginal) - Performer

Elijah-Jade Bowen (Mununjali, Nunukul, Guugu Yimithirr) - Performer

Ruby Platemotley - Performer

Hannah Hebblethwaite - Performer

Sam Pankhurst - Composer

Hannah Portwine - BlakDance Stage Manager

Simon Cook (Mamu) - BlakDance Production Manager

---

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.

This project is supported by Creative Australia - Projects funding.

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.