Ausdance WA is funded by the State Government of Western Australia through the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industry.
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Cut The Sky – Ardyaloon
August 27, 2015 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FreeFree community performances Ardyaloon Community
Marrugeku
“Seventy minutes of mind-blowing intercultural and interdisciplinary performance” Carol Flavell Neist, ARTS HUB
In the face of seemingly inevitable industrialisation and climate change, is it possible to dream a different future together? This question is central to Cut The Sky, a new production from Western Australia’s foremost international dance theatre company, Broome’s own Marrugeku, that will tour the South West Region and West Kimberley in August 2015.
Cut The Sky is a work in five acts based on the poems written and spoken by Edwin Lee Mulligan, a Nyikina/Walmajarri man from Noonkanbah Station. It features the consummate talent of Broome dancer and Marrugeku’s Co-artistic Director Dalisa Pigram, includes original songs from soul singer Ngaiire, Indigenous songs by the cast, and covers from Nick Cave sung live with thrilling effect by Broome diva Ngaire Pigram.
Inspired by Edwin’s poems, Cut The Sky is a meditation on humanity’s frailty in the face of our own actions. Dalisa Pigram says “You’re born with this responsibility to manage the balance of country. If we don’t keep that balance, there will be consequences”. Cut The Sky commences in a burnt landscape, where a group of climate change refugees face yet another extreme weather event. Propelled back and forward in time, they revisit conflict with mining companies, the destruction of fauna and the relegation of the marginalised while contemplating the gift of a human life and the life giving force of the sun.
Like climate change itself, Cut the Sky is at once unapologetically local and international. This concept is embedded in a collaboration which includes artists from Europe, Asia, Africa and remote and urban Australia. Cut the Sky was commissioned by Theater Im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen (Germany), Carriageworks (Australia), KVS, Brussels (Belgium), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Centre Culturel Tjibaou Nouméa (New Caladonia). In October 2015, Cut The Sky will tour the Midwestern European Union nations of Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
In Cut The Sky, dance, video, poetry and song collide. All the elements – popular and high art, literal and poetic, Indigenous and European – meet abruptly in a breathtaking 70 minute performance, creating electric connections. The dominance of the climate change discussion by “a lot of people coming from logic and science” is not lost on Dalisa who contends that Cut the Sky values “an Aboriginal perspective of looking at Country” and draws on the language of dance and theatre to convey ideas about a very complex, global problem. The result is an ambitious multi-dimensional work that showcases Marrugeku’s unique contemporary choreography – restless, taut and unwavering.
Concept by Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain
Directed by Rachael Swain
Choreographed by Dalisa Pigram and Serge Aimé Coulibaly
Storyteller Edwin Lee Mulligan
Media and visual concept Desire Machine Collective
Set and costume Stephen Curtis
Dramaturg Hildegard de Vuyst
Musical director Matthew Fargher
Cultural consultant Patrick Dodson
The community of Ausdance WA acknowledges the Traditional Owners of all Lands and Countries on this continent. We pay particular respect to Elders, Cultural and Community Leaders, and emerging leaders. With this understanding of the country’s First Peoples, we are grateful for our place in learning and serving dance, Arts and Culture in Western Australia.
Always Was. Always Will Be.