Your Digital Program

 

Contents
Credits & Show Information
The Making of Jurrungu Ngan-ga
Biographies
About Marrugeku
Partners

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Credits

Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] is collaboratively created by:

 

Creative and Cultural Team

Concept Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain with Patrick Dodson
Choreography Dalisa Pigram with the performers
Direction Rachael Swain
Performance Dramaturgy Hildegard de Vuyst
Cultural Dramaturgy Behrouz Boochani, Patrick Dodson, Omid Tofighian
Music Sam Serruys, Paul Charlier and Rhyan Clapham (aka DOBBY)
Lyrics Beni 'Bjah' Hasler
Sound Design Sam Serruys and Paul Charlier
Scenic Design Abdul-Rahman Abdullah
Costume Design Andrew Treloar
Lighting Design Damien Cooper
Additional Choreography Krump Army: Stacy Peke aka Red Ladybrui5er
Additional Music Far from Home - Farhad Bandesh and Anna Liebzeit (composition), Farhad Bandesh (recorded vocals sung in Kurdish), The Ha Dub Rewerk’d - MikeQ (composer and performer), Jalangurru Wiyi - Emmanuel James Brown (live vocals sung in Bunuba)
Additional Instrumental Recordings Natasha Rumiz (viola)

 

Cast

Co-devising Performers Czack (Ses) Bero, Emmanuel James Brown, Chandler Connell, Luke Currie-Richardson, Issa el Assaad, Zachary Lopez (previous), Macon Escobal Riley (present), Bhenji Ra, Feras Shaheen, Miranda Wheen

 

Production

Production Manager & Lighting Operator Aiden Brennan
Audio Technician Raine Paul
Company Manager Denise Wilson
Producer and Tour Manager Natalie Smith

 

Photographer: Prudence Upton

Show Information

Duration 1hr 20mins, no interval
Warnings Contains low-level strobe lighting, partial nudity, references to self-harm and depictions of violence, racial abuse and police/border security brutality. This performance contains the names of people who have passed away. Recommended for audiences 15+

 

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Sadness, Anger, Resilience and Joy: The Making of Jurrungu Ngan-ga

By Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain

In July 2016, we sat down with Yawuru leader Patrick Dodson to discuss jurrungu ngan-ga, a Yawuru kinship concept that enables certain relatives to communicate 'straight' or directly with one another. Thirty years earlier, Patrick had been one of six commissioners and the only non-lawyer who sat on the Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Thinking about jurrungu ngan-ga as a concept to inspire a new work for Marrugeku, Patrick said: "Because we lack the ability to straight talk to one another, this fear grows in each generation, holding community and society back in multiple ways." He made the critical link between the rampant imprisonment of Indigenous Australians, who remain proportionally some of the most incarcerated peoples in the world, and the locking up of refugees in offshore and onshore detention centres, suggesting: “This linked scenario stems from our history as a penal colony. We are a nation of jailers, we lock up that which we fear.” Patrick then posed a crucial question: How would we work to embody fear on stage?

Researching this question led us to the groundbreaking autobiographical novel No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018), a collaborative work written in Farsi by Kurdish Iranian journalist and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani and translated into English and edited by Iranian Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian. Behrouz’s account of his perilous journey to Australia in search of safety and protection, and his subsequent incarceration in the Australian-run immigration prison on Manus Island (PNG), was translated by Omid from thousands of WhatsApp messages typed into a smuggled phone.*

In Behrouz’s and Omid’s culturally situated, philosophical and political framing of Australia’s carceral-border regime, we found critical tools, approaches to genre and key scenes that helped us to activate Patrick’s questions.

We invited Behrouz and Omid as guest cultural dramaturgs to join Patrick in this long term role with the company, working alongside Flemish dance dramaturg Hildegard de Vuyst. Through this intersectional dialogue, we extended Marrugeku’s existing intercultural and improvisational devising processes to produce three distinct performance genres for the work: "straight talk", "horrific surrealism" and "this is Australia". In this way, we have continued Marrugeku’s core mission to work through the methodologies of Indigenous governed intercultural performance to create art that interrogates the burning issues of our times.

Jurrungu Ngan-ga is set in the "prison of the mind of Australia", expertly designed by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah to both foreground the 'inside' and the 'outside' and at once to reveal its flimsy construction. The multi-talented cast and creative team draw on their intersecting yet distinct cultural and community-informed experiences (Indigenous, people seeking asylum, transgender and settlers of many backgrounds) to ask: "Who really is in prison here?" Together this extraordinary team have responded through choreography, sound and visual art to investigate that which Australia wishes to lock away, to put behind walls and to isolate.

The making of Jurrungu Ngan-ga has required a constant engagement with sadness, anger, resilience and joy. We are honoured to work with this amazing team of collaborators who have brought their own lived experience, bodies, politics, spirit and passion to the making of the show.

*Most of the messages were collated first by Boochani’s other translator, Moones Mansoubi

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Biographies

Dalisa Pigram
Artistic Co-Director & Choreographer

A Yawuru/Bardi woman born and raised in Broome, Dalisa has worked with Marrugeku since the first production Mimi and has been Co-Artistic Director of Marrugeku since 2008. A co-devising performer on all Marrugeku’s productions, touring extensively overseas and throughout Australia. Dalisa’s solo work Gudirr Gudirr earned an Australian Dance Award (Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance 2014) and a Green Room Award (Best Female Performer 2014). Dalisa co-conceived Marrugeku’s Burning Daylight and Cut the Sky with Rachael Swain, co-choreographing both works as well as Marrugeku’s Le Dernier Appel (2018) with Serge Aimé Coulibaly for which she also received a Green Room Award (Best Performance 2020). Together with Swain she co-directed Buru, Ngalimpa and co-curated Marrugeku’s four International Indigenous Choreographic Labs and Burrbgaja Yalirra. Dalisa co-conceived with Rachael Swain and Patrick Dodson Marrugeku’s Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk], co-choreographing the new work with the performers. Dalisa also co-choreographed and performed in Marrugeku’s new digital work, the Gudirr Gudirr video and sound installation. In her community, Dalisa teaches the Yawuru Language at Cable Beach Primary School and is committed to the maintenance of Indigenous language and culture through arts and education. Dalisa is co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange (Performance Research 2021).

Rachael Swain
Artistic Co-Director & Director

Rachael is a Pākehā settler director and dramaturg born on the land of the Ngai Tahu, Aotearoa and living and working on the lands of the Gadigal and the Yawuru in so called Australia. Rachael specializes in directing and facilitating intersectional and trans-disciplinary dance and theatre. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Marrugeku with Dalisa Pigram. She has co-conceived and directed Marrugeku’s productions Mimi (1996), Crying Baby (2001), Burning Daylight (2006), Cut the Sky (2015) and Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] (2022) and co-directed Buru (2010) and Ngalimpa (2018) with Dalisa Pigram. Her dramaturgy credits include Gudirr Gudirr (2013), the video installation Gudirr Gudirr (2021) directed by Vernon Ah Kee, Burrbgaja Yalirra 1 (2018) and Le Dernier Appel (2018). Rachael was co-artistic director of Stalker Theatre (1989-2014) during which her directing highlights included Incognita (2003) and the Helpmann-nominated Shanghai Lady Killer (2010) written by Tony Ayres. Rachael gained a Masters in Advanced Theatre and Dance Research from DAS ARTS, Amsterdam and a Doctorate in Theatre Studies from Melbourne University. She is the author of Dance in Contested Land— new intercultural dramaturgies (Palgrave Macmillian, 2020) and co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange (Performance Research 2021).

Patrick Dodson
Cultural Dramaturg

Patrick is a Yawuru cultural leader from Broome and currently a Senator for Western Australia. He has dedicated his life work to being an advocate for constructive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people based on mutual respect, understanding and dialogue. He is a recipient of the Sydney International Peace Prize. He was a Royal Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, inaugural Chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Co-Chair of the Expert Panel for Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians. Patrick lives in Broome with his family, where he is involved in social, cultural, economic and environmental sustainability through his roles as Chair of the Lingiari Foundation and previously as Executive Chair of Nyamba Buru Yawuru. Patrick is Cultural Advisor on all Marrugeku projects collaborating on the cultural dramaturgy of all productions.

Behrouz Boochani
Cultural Dramaturg

Behrouz is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer. He was born in western Iran. He was held in the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea from 2013 until its closure in 2017. He remained on the island before being moved to Port Moresby along with the other detainees around September 2019. In November 2019, he arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand, on a one-month visa, to speak at a special event organised by WORD Christchurch, as well as other speaking events. His visa expired and in July 2020, Behrouz was granted refugee status. Behrouz is now a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury. His memoir, No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Picador 2018), won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Nonfiction in January 2019. The book was typed out on a mobile phone in a series of single messages over time and translated from Persian into English by Omid Tofighian.

Omid Tofighian
Cultural Dramaturg

Omid is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate, combining philosophy with interests in citizen media, popular culture, displacement and discrimination. He is affiliated with University of New South Wales; Birkbeck Law, University of London; and University of Sydney. His publications include Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues (Palgrave 2016) and a translation of Behrouz Boochani’s multi-award-winning book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (Picador 2018). Omid is also co-editor of special issues for journals Literature and Aesthetics (2011), Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media (2019) and Southerly (2020).

Hildegard de Vuyst
Dramaturg

In 1994, Hildegard started working as a dramaturg with les ballets C de la B for La Tristeza Complice, which led to a longstanding collaboration with director Alain Platel, including Iets op Bach, Wolf, Vsprsand Pitié!, Out of Context, Requiem pour Elle and Nicht Schlafen amongst others. In 2001, she started working at the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS) as a dramaturg and part of the artistic team who transformed KVS into one of the most vibrant and locally engaged production houses in Europe. Hildegard is currently resident dramaturge for both Marseille Festival and les ballets C de la B running the CoLabo platform.

Sam Serruys
Composer & Sound Designer

Sam is a guitarist and composer who graduated from the Dutch Tilburg based Rockacademie in 2003 and attended the audio engineering training course at the School of Audio Engineering in Rotterdam. He toured Belgium and Holland as a member of Bertus Borgers’ band (saxophonist with Herman Brood and Raymond van het Groenewoud). In 2005, he started working at Les Ballets C de la B as sound engineer and composer for Koen Augustijnen in IMPORT/EXPORT, Ashes, Ted Stoffer in Aphasiadisiac, Lisi Estaras in primero, patagonia, Alain Platel in Out of Context, Gardenia and Rosalba Torres Guerrero in Pénombre. Sam now works as a freelance composer, designer and engineer and works for Ultima Vez (Wim van de Keybus), Nadine Ganasse, Virginie Thirion, Bl!ndman, Needcompany and others. Sam was Musical Director and Composer of Marrugeku’s Gudirr Gudirr and Burrbgaja Yalirra.

Paul Charlier
Additional Music & Sound Designer

A long time ago, Paul played with the industrial bands SoliPsiK and SPK. Since then, he has composed the music and sound design for nearly 200 theatre, dance, radio, television and film productions. His credits include National Theatre of England’s Afterlife, Out of Joint’s Dreams of Violence, Deuce (Broadway), DV8 Physical Theatre’s The Cost of Living, Sydney Opera House and Malthouse’s Honour Bound, Legs On The Wall and IWC’s The Crossing, Force Majeure’s Already Elsewhere, Griffin Theatre’s Prima Facie, Belvoir Theatre’s A Room of One’s Own, Dance of Death, Faith Healer, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Buried Child and Suddenly Last Summer, and Sydney Theatre Company’s Uncle Vanya, Tot Mom, A Streetcar Named Desire and Copenhagen. He was Composer for the feature films Adam Goodes - The Final Quarter, Candy, Last Ride and Suzy & the Simple Man, Music Supervisor for Holding The Man, Sound Designer for Looking For Alibrandi and Sound Designer and Music Mixer for Paul Kelly – Stories of Me. Paul wrote and produced the radio features A Plan For Eurydice for ABC Radio and The Touring Machine for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2017 he co-directed the poly-media dance work Wireless.

Rhyan Clapham aka "DOBBY"
Additional Music

DOBBY is a rapper, drummer and music composer. He proudly identifies as a Filipino and Aboriginal musician, whose family is from Brewarrina on Ngemba land, and is a member of the Murrawarri Republic in Weilmoringle, NSW. He has performed extensively locally including BIGSOUND and Sydney Opera House, and internationally in Germany, UK, USA and Netherlands.

Farhad Bandesh
Singer

Farhad is a multidisciplinary Kurdish musician and artist from Ilam, Iran. He works in a range of media including painting, working with stones and gems, drawing and graphic art. He is also a guitar-builder, musician, singer, poet and wine-maker. He created many songs and artworks while imprisoned in Australia’s offshore and onshore immigration prisons. He states: “making art has helped keep me alive. When I create something, when I make it, it means I am not forgotten.” "Far from Home" is a song sung in a traditional Kurdish style about being far from home and surrounded by no-one. It is by Farhad Bandesh and Anna Liebzeit.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah
Set Designer

Abdul-Rahman is an Australian artist whose practice explores the different ways that memory can inhabit and emerge from familial spaces. Living and working in rural Western Australia, Abdul-Rahman provides a unique perspective across intersecting and disparate communities. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, his work has been described as magic realism, creating poetic interventions with the space it occupies.

Abdul-Rahman graduated from Curtin University of Technology with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2012. In recent years, he has exhibited work at a variety of cultural institutes and art galleries including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Newcastle Art Gallery and Pataka Art + Museum (NZ). He is a current board member of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and founding member of Eleven: a collective of Muslim Australian contemporary art practitioners.

Damien Cooper
Lighting Designer

Damien is a lighting designer working in opera, theatre and dance. He has designed over 300 shows. Damien’s career highlights include Neil Armfield’s production of The Ring for Opera Australia, Exit The King on Broadway, Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake for the Australian Ballet, which was presented in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, Keating! The Musical and Australian Dance Theatre’s Birdbrain, which played over 60 venues around the world.

Damien works with many leading dance companies in Australia and this work has toured extensively around the globe. Highlights include AB Intra, Cinco, Ocho, Grand, Air and Other Invisible Forces and Orb for Sydney Dance Company, set and lights for Shaun Parker Company’s Am I, lighting design for Tasdance’s Affinity, Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine, Bangarra Dance Theatre’s of earth & sky, Stalker Theatre Company’s Shanghai Lady Killer, Australian Dance Theatre’s The Beginning of Nature and Be Your Self and The Australian Ballet’s The Happy Prince, Murphy, Romeo and Juliet, Firebird and The Narrative of Nothing. Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Lighting Design and four Green Room awards for Best Lighting Design. He won the Australian Production Designers Guild inaugural Award for Lighting Design for his work on Opera Australia’s The Ring, and the Showreelfinder Award for Live Performance Lighting Design for The Glass Menagerie at Belvoir.

Andrew Treloar
Costume Designer

Andrew is a visual artist, dance performer and designer of fashion, costume and set. His purpose-built dance and art studio is located on the un-ceded lands of Wurundjeri country, a home of the Woiwurrung language and part of the Kulin nation. He is grateful to have been invited to work amidst the concepts and stories woven together into Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk].

Czack Bero aka "Ses"
Associate Artist & Performer

Ses is a proud Indigenous man from both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background coming from the Kunjen people of Western Cape York and the Erub and Meriam people of the eastern part of the Torres Straits. Ses was born and raised in Townsville, North Queensland, where his family always practiced their culture and performing in traditional ceremonies, celebrations and in everyday life.
Ses studied at NAISDA Dance College where he completed his diploma in Professional Dance. As part of his training, Ses has taught workshops in schools, community centres and youth detention centres. Working and creating with children for a better future is one of his passions. In 2019, Ses was cast as an ensemble performer and dance captain of Opera Australia's remount of the musical Bran Nue Dae. He has also performed extensively for large-scale events and festivals during his career.

Emmanuel James Brown aka "EJB"
Performer

EJB is an actor and traditional dancer who lives in Fitzroy Crossing. When not acting, he works with his grandfather as a cultural tour guide. He has bush skills, cultural knowledge and fluency in the Bunuba language. EJB completed the one-year intensive course at WAAPA for indigenous students, giving him a Cert IV Aboriginal Theatre, and went on to play Ilaji in Jandamarra by Steve Hawke for Black Swan State Theatre Company in the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival. He played Darudi in the drama/documentary Jandamarra’s War for Wawili produced by Electric Pictures and directed by Mitch Torres for ABC TV. In 2014, he played Jandamarra in the concert version of the story for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. He also worked with Yirra Yaakin in So Long Suckers.

Chandler Connell
Performer

Chandler is a descendant of the Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal Country and is an emerging artist. Chandler is a NAISDA Graduate. He has been taught, influenced and inspired by many artists who have passed on great lessons and continue to guide him. Now embarked on his journey in the performing arts industry, he continues to share, love, inspire and Gari Yala (speak the truth).

Luke Currie-Richardson
Performer

Luke is a descendant of the Kuku Yalanji and Djabugay peoples, the Mununjali Clan of South East QLD, the Butchulla clan of Fraser Island and the Meriam people of the Eastern Torres Strait Islands.

Luke’s passion for dance began in 2002 while traditional dancing with Gerib Sik Torres Strait Islander Dance Group with his family in Canberra and his first introduction to contemporary dance came as a member of QL2. Luke studied dance at NAISDA Dance College and in 2010 commenced a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) at Queensland University of Technology. In 2012 Luke appeared in Wesley Enoch’s I Am Eora for Sydney Festival. From 2012 to 2018, Luke was a company dancer in Bangarra Dance Theatre. Luke continues to explore different avenues as a storyteller to represent and showcase his culture. In 2019, Luke was the host of Pay the Rent, a short documentary about reparations in Australia produced by Buzzfeed Australia. Luke is a sessional teacher at NAISDA, commenced as a mentor with Aurora Foundation earlier this year and was co-host of 2019 NAIDOC in the City. He is currently a member of Muggera, a traditional Aboriginal dance group based in Sydney.

Issa el Assaad
Performer

Issa is a graduate of architecture and a multi-disciplinary artist. Born as a Palestinian refugee in the United Arab Emirates, he is now based in Melbourne Australia. Issa’s dance practice is informed by a love of spatial movement and interrogation of how displaced bodies inhabit and demand space. Issa’s critical approach to decolonising architecture and expanding upon systems of community care in design has led to a dance practice that draws upon personal experiences of embodied empowerment. He is particularly interested in how political and social norms can be explored through interpretive movement and storytelling. Originally trained within an Arabic folklore dance tradition, Issa pursued professional dance specifically for Marrugeku’s production of Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk].

Macon Escobal Riley
Performer

Macon is an Australian-Filipino dancer and performer. Since graduating from Tertiary study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Macon has worked on various projects with independent practitioners and contemporary dance companies. He has performed in Co:3 Dance Company’s season of Archives of Humanity (Perth Festival 2021), Off-base Dance’s season of You are (Perth Fringe Festival 2022), joined the team of performers in Marrugeku’s production of Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk], touring nationally and internationally, Co:3 Dance Company’s season of Gloria (Perth 2022), and West Australian Opera’s season of La Traviata (Perth 2022). His practice has a focus on exploring the duality of identity and is inspired by spontaneity, lineage, and evolution.

Bhenji Ra
Performer

Bhenji is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice combines dance, choreography, video and installation. She attended the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York in 2008, followed by BA in Dance at WAAPA. Bhenji exhibited two group works in 2015, You Own Everything for Performance Space Day4Night exhibition and Bowling Club Medley for Underbelly Arts Festival, and at the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, in collaboration with artist Justin Shoulder. In 2016, she was the Dance WEB scholarship recipient for Impulstanz Dance Festival, Vienna, undergoing a mentorship program with artist Tino Sehgal.

Feras Shaheen
Performer

Feras' art practice spans across performance, semiotics, street dance, readymade art and digital media. He was born in Dubai, to Palestinian parents, and moved to Western Sydney at the age of 11. Feras traverses different roles within the arts, working as a director, performer, teacher, choreographer and digital artist. He holds a Bachelor of Design from Western Sydney University (2014). Feras is currently working with Marrugeku presenting Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk], a collaborative production that addresses both local and global issues regarding the fear of cultural difference. In an ongoing capacity, Feras works on a duet titled "Klapping" with Ahilan Ratnamohan, a contemporary project that consists of choreographic research into football, initially commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre (2017). In 2021, Feras conceptualised and designed "Forum Q", a hybrid art form between public art installation and recreation space for the community in collaboration with CAC and Campbelltown Council. Feras was named The Australian Ballet’s Telstra Emerging Choreographer (TEC) in 2021.

Miranda Wheen
Associate Artist & Performer

Miranda is a Sydney-based freelance dancer. Her practice is rooted in contemporary dance performance and spans intercultural collaboration, improvisation, advocacy and choreography. She is an Associate Artist with Marrugeku, and has performed in their last three works: Cut the Sky, Burrbgaja Yalirra and Le Dernier Appel. She has performed and collaborated with many companies and choreographers within Australia and internationally including; Stalker Theatre Company, Mirramu Dance Company, Martin Del Amo (as Associate Artist on his Australian Dance Award winning Champions), Ghenoa Gela, Shaun Parker and Company, Rakini Devi, Restless Dance Theatre, Cadi McCarthy and the Tsai Jui-Yueh Dance Foundation in Taiwan, among others.

Miranda is a founding member of Dance Makers Collective and directed their standout work Dads, which was short-listed for a 2017 Australian Dance Award, and The Rivoli, which premiered at Sydney Festival 2020. She trained at Western Sydney University where she was awarded the Dean’s Medal and attained a First Class Honours at Macquarie University. In 2007 she studied at L'Ecole des Sables, the International School for Contemporary and Traditional African Dance in Senegal.

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Photographer: Prudence Upton

 

 

About Marrugeku

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Marrugeku is an unparalleled presence in Australia today, dedicated to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians working together to develop new dance languages that are restless, transformative and unwavering.

Marrugeku builds bridges and breaks down walls between urban and remote dance communities, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and between local and global situations. Our works are created out of urgent and insurgent reciprocities, believing, on our watch, we face major change in Indigenous Australia and that telling stories together is one of the simplest and hardest things we can do.

Marrugeku is led by co-artistic directors: choreographer/dancer Dalisa Pigram and director/dramaturg Rachael Swain. Working together for 27 years, they co-conceive and facilitate Marrugeku’s productions and research laboratories, introducing audiences to the unique and potent structures of Indigenous knowledge systems and the compelling experience of intercultural performance. Marrugeku’s performers come from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, collaborating to co-create each production. Marrugeku’s patron is Yawuru law man and national reconciliation advocate Patrick Dodson.

Working from our bicoastal operations in the remote town of Broome Western Australia and the urban Centre of Carriageworks, Sydney, Marrugeku harnesses the dynamic of performance exchange drawn from remote, urban, intercultural and trans-Indigenous approaches to expand the possibilities of contemporary dance. Our productions tour throughout urban and remote Australia, to other Indigenous contexts internationally and throughout the world.

Marrugeku Patron
Senator Patrick Dodson

MARRUGEKU BOARD
Debra Pigram (Chair)
Matthew Fargher (Secretary)
Tegan Gasior (Treasurer)
Nancia Guivarra
David Malacari
Ninielia Mills
Dalisa Pigram
Rachael Swain

MARRUGEKU STAFF
Co-Artistic Directors: Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain
General Manager: Guy Boyce
Strategy and Sales: Justin Macdonnell
Producer: Natalie Smith
Production Manager: Aiden Brennan

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Partners 

Commissioning Partners

Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] was commissioned by Carriageworks, International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg with Körber-Stiftung and the City of Melbourne through Arts House.

Funding Partners

Marrugeku is funded by the Australian Government through the Australia Council its arts funding and advisory body, the Government of Western Australian through the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industries, Create NSW, the Australian Government through the Indigenous Language and Arts Program, the Nelson Meers Foundation, and International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg (in the frame of “Exile Today – Production Residencies for Artists” by Kampnagel and Körber-Stiftung), and the Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation.

           

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Festival for the Future

Adelaide Festival is proudly Carbon Neutral and you can help us reduce our impact on the environment further! This year, Adelaide Festival has partnered with Reforest and Trees for Life to support the Mannavale farm bushfire recovery project in Adelaide Hills. 

Plant one for the planet as part of your Adelaide Festival experience. You can learn more about the project, take action and track your impact here. 

Your contribution through Reforest will help repair the damage caused by both bushfires and historical land clearing, and help Trees for Life plant a range of native species to restore an area of forest habitat for native wildlife.