LISTENING TO COUNTRY ‘Listening to Country’ is an intercultural performance research project led by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) recipient, Dr Rachael Swain. The performance-based research project has been investigating Indigenous dance and dramaturgy as practices of ‘listening to country’ at a time of global environmental change. A three-week research laboratory developed at The University of Melbourne with Indigenous cultural custodians was staged at sites across the Kimberley, leading to a dramaturgy symposium in Broome and a major creative work by the dance company Marrugeku, of which Dr Swain is co-artistic director. Titled Cut the Sky , the work is a dramatic performance in five acts based on the poems written and spoken by Edwin Lee Mulligan, and a meditation on humanity’s frailty in the face of our own actions. The performance explores the complex, global problem of climate change using a different language, of theatre and dance, which values an Aboriginal perspective of looking at country.
Marrugeku have now toured the performance to remote Kimberley communities, Australian festivals and international venues.
A scene from Cut The Sky. Credit: Jon Green.
SUPPORTING INDIGENOUS RESEARCH 48
49
SUPPORTING INDIGENOUS RESEARCH
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online