Details

Gudirr Gudirr calls a warning, the guwayi bird calls when the tide is turning - to miss the call is to drown. An intimate solo dance and video work performed by Dalisa Pigram, daughter of Broome. By turns hesitant, restless, resilient and angry, Gudirr Gudirr lights a path from a broken past through a fragile present and on to a future still in the making. The production considers the legacy of Australia's history for Aboriginal people in northwest Australia today and asks: what does it take to decolonise Aboriginal people's minds, to unlock doors and to face cultural change? Solo work by Dalisa Pigram, directed by Koen Augustijnen (les ballet C de la B). Gudirr Gudirr is a warning. The guwayi bird calls when the tide is turning - to miss the call is to drown. The animals hear, the land knows. Listen. The language is dying. Young people are hanging themselves. Bulldozers clear our ancestors' land and gas pipes will soon cut the sea where we fish. Gudirr Gudirr is an intimate dance and video work by Dalisa Pigram that draws on a physicality born of her Asian-Indigenous identity. In collaboration with choreographer Koen Augustijnen and acclaimed Indigenous Australian visual artist Vernon Ah Kee, Pigram builds a unique dance language marked by effortless focus and a powerful fluidity. By turns hesitant, restless, resilient and angry, Gudirr Gudirr lights a path from broken past to fragile present, and on to a future still in the making. Gudirr Gudirr calls a warning to Dalisa's people, a community facing the effects of massive industrialisation on nearby traditional lands whilst fighting to ensure their language will survive. But it also calls a warning to us all that our cultures are fragile and our survival is a constant negotiation.

Creatives/Company

Director: Goen Augustijnen