So the New Year was ushered in much like every other year for me, with a healthy schedule of all things to watch, see and do care of the annual Sydney Festival lineup. Only this year, I didn’t run myself ragged hauling a#$ to every show in town. This year I was selective. I feel I have to be up front and confess that I only rocked up to the shows where complimentary seats were being bestowed upon eager beavers like me like a shower of confetti at a wedding. Needless to say I haven’t seen as much as I usually do.
And I have to declare, I am all the better for it.
I remember my brief foray to gay Pareeeee in 2013, where I started to develop a weird condition where my eyes just glazed over in line with the fatigue in my arches from dragging my feet across miles of marble and polished concrete within the city’s numerous famed galleries, each housing an endless array of prized artefacts. Some pieces I had only ever seen as a teenager within my coveted copy of Helen Gardiner’s 7th edition of Art Through the Ages (stolen from the shelves of my high school reference library and later returned by my mother). But alas, after seeing so damn many pieces I felt as if I were seated at a Japanese kaitenzushi bar wanting to pick yet another beautifully presented morsel off the kaleidoscopic gustatory rotating conveyor belt, knowing all too well that both my stomach and wallet had reached its limit.
Yet again I digress.
The first theatrical foray of 2025 was titled As You Like It Or The Land Acknowledgement by Canadian performer/ divisor Cliff Cardinal. I have to state right off the bat, I still don’t know how I feel about this show. Yes, we were duped as I am yet to discover where William Shakespeare fits into this scenario and what kind of metaphor this title represents past the more than adept verbiage on offer. However, Cardinal’s non-stop 90 minute banter pondering the appalling state of Canada, through a First Nations lens, was pretty impressive. The work was a fitting choice given the failed referendum giving First Nations people here a direct voice to parliament.
How is it that when we hear about the shocking mistreatment of Indigenous people elsewhere we can become invested, incensed even? Yet here we are simply meant to get over it and assimilate already. But assimilate to what? What does the face of Australia look like now? Surely it’s no longer the blonde haired blue eyed sun kissed surfer chicks and dudes of yesteryear, now inevitably making annual appointments to the skin specialist. That’s certainly not what I encounter walking down the streets of Auburn, or Bankstown, nor watching the world pass me by in the Westfield shopping mall in Parramatta.
One of the most controversial things Cardinal mentioned was his disdain for the current spate of obligatory Indigenous land acknowledgement practices. I have to say, sometimes I concur. I don’t want to hear a dull digital pre-recording because it’s a cop-out. Yes it is. Indigenous peoples’ way of being and doing in the world is mediated through the body. Our bodies are the repositories of knowledge and to conveniently circumvent this realtime body-to-body embodied ritual aspect is a shame.
I saw Cardinal’s solo performance of Huff as part of the 2017 Sydney festival lineup. It was more traditional in its theatrical form but no less daring and funny and hard hitting. While I don’t know if I enjoyed this work as much, it cements Cardinal’s consummate excellence as a maker and his breadth as a performer, using his stagecraft to tell his vital narratives.
I can’t be sure now, but I think Branch Nebula’s Air Time, playing at the Seymour Centre, was next on my dance card this year. Not that you would describe Cardinal’s Land Acknowledgement as dance, despite his animated coverage of the stage space in front of the curtain concealing more than three quarters of the Opera House Drama Theatre’s performative real estate. Not that Branch’s works could be defined as merely dance either. Definitely choreographic, but not just dance.
Let me say up front, I was initially disappointed that Air Time was prefaced with a prerecorded message from performer Feras Shaheen, born in Dubai to Palestinian parents, making an impassioned plea for us as a nation, not just an audience witnessing a fluffy piece of entertainment, to take a closer look at what is happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza. I have heard similar vocal overtures before, in other works and thought there was obviously something missing from the actual work if it had to be accompanied by a spoken caveat. However, in hindsight I realise that Shaheen’s statement prefaced and framed what was to come.
Instead of division, the various disciplines working together in Air Time became a metaphor for our differences and our ability to rise above them, to work through them. In Air Time the contemporary dancer was no less at home on the ramps as the well wheeled bmx-er, skater and skateboarders. There is an etiquette in the streets that is learned through the dangerous near misses and to avoid danger that is sometimes missing in the hierarchical constructs upholding the formal theatrical spaces. This work was definitely pushing back against that pervasive power paradigm with its egalitarian yet nevertheless provocative approach. This was made evident in the vocal backlash from the audience immediately hailing Shaheen’s words as antisemitic, which was followed by a push by the Festival organisation to have the intro amended and/ or removed for the rest of the season.
It was heartening to see Feras use his dance, his costuming and hip hop tagging to claim a place for his ancestry in a time of mass displacement and uncertainty in tandem with his aforementioned statement.
I have watched Branch directors Mirabelle Wouters And Lee Wilson navigate the idiosyncratic terrain of the skate park, bringing the outdoors indoors, for well over a decade now, beginning with their work Paradise City (Carriageworks 2007), which included the inimitable physicality of performer Alexandra Harrison fearlessly dueting with a cyclist in a way that far exceded the couplings in danger and daring attitude that I recognised from my Modernist ballet beginnings. Like many of Lee and Mirabelle’s works Air Time is a slow burn, which really kicks off about half way through when the sequins, day glow and glow in the dark tights, tinsel air conditioning tubing, plastic bag ribboning and ping pong balls take their turn on the half pipes. However, I know that in order to appreciate the OTT accoutrement take over we have to sit through the build up. Like when the rains finally come in the tropics after the stifling humidity that drags and lingers, until enough is enough.
Air Time is definitely epic, however I find I always want to be closer to the action and this time the Everest Theatre didn’t quite cut it. In this instance the layout definitely hindered our ability to fully appreciate the magnitude of physical risk employed.
In comparison to Branch’s Air Time, Dance Makers Collective’s positioning of the audience in the round on the fringes of the dancefloor in All In, presented at the newly refurbished Parramatta Town Hall, had just the right amount of proximity to the action on stage. Although it must be noted that the scale of All In was much smaller, ergo much easier to accommodate.
Like Air Time, All In’s underlying message was one of inclusivity and like Air Time there was a caveat, following the Acknowledgement of Country, in solidarity with the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. In fact the strategy to silence artists regarding the Palestinian situation in Gaza had the opposite effect, with artists uniting in their support across the Sydney Festival event. I later attended the Dobby concert at the Sydney Chamber Orchestra redubbed The Thirsty Mile where he wrote and interjected a recitation of a damned impressive poem referencing the original incident at the Seymour Centre, in solidarity with Shaheen.
Back to All In.
The theme for All In was all things dance – where, how and why it happens. It was a work in four distinct parts. Part one was an Indigenous Welcome to Country. The type of Welcome to Country I know and have performed myself many times over the course of my career. Led by Dharug choreographer Peta Strachan, this danced welcome was an activation of the space involving the performance of movement including, but not exclusively reflective of, activities occurring before colonisation. I regard this type of dance as an invitation for our First Nations ancestors to bear witness and guide us through the ensuing activities.
Part two was a contemporary representation of the social aspect of dance, featuring the Dance Makers ensemble. Moving in canon the dancers caught ensuring sequences. The action occurred in pockets as jewels of action, each facet another style passing through their bodies, from hip hop, to the nutbush. This showcased section gave us the chance to appreciate individual artistry, of which director Miranda Wheen excels. Miranda is an expert at finding the strength of each dancer and giving them their moment to shine, without affecting the overall balance within an ensemble enchainment. In past work Dads (Parramatta Riverside Theatre, 2016) it was Miri herself who stood out as the consummate impersonator able to conjure a vision of the quintessential Aussie dad circa 1940s-1970s, with her perfect embodiment of the working class man. In Rivoli (Granville Town Hall, Sydney Festival 2020) I cannot forget Katina Olsen’s comedic cameo as an affable, yet mildly maligned, bobby-soxer and the antics which unfolded while waiting in readiness, for her piece of the action on the dance floor. While All In was not imbued with the same amount of nostalgia, it did have the same feel good vibes.
Part three of All In was a favourite of mine where representatives of other dance genres were given their moment, from Vishnu Arunasalam’s contemporary Bharatanatyam reckoning to Azzam Mohamed’s Riddim Nation b-boy beats. But it was Pepa Molina’s passionate solo which almost stole the show. Her dramatic presence had weight and shifted the work’s tone. This section was a true celebration of the dances of the folk, the dances which truly exceeds their role as a vehicle for spectacle to an affirmation of identity and tradition, of important moments in life marked by ritual and ceremony.
Part four of All In was an invitation to participate. As audience members we were invited to join in and we were subsequently guided by visual prompts to mix it up a bit. This element was initiated in previous work Rivoli also and like Rivoli it felt like the perfect release of energy and was the perfect way to end this performance.
Last but not least was my involvement as dramaturg with Henrietta Baird’s Plant a Promise. Like the other shows I saw, bar Cardinal’s Land Acknowledgement, Plant a Promise was a local production. And like the others Baird’s Plant a Promise functioned on more than one level, as performance spectacle, and as a vehicle of cultural obligation, with multiple components and outcomes all centred around an overarching theme that is, our indivisible relationship to and with, the environment.
Upon entering the space the audience was confronted with an installation of testimonials spilling from an oversized suspended dilly bag. It was placed nearby some pieces of charred furniture. This juxtapositioning of objects introduced the notion that the work as a whole operated as an initiator of cross cultural discourse about our relationship with nature. The video and audio montage projected onto the bag featured people living with the continued threat of bushfires, a western scientific understanding of the Australian environment as well as First Nations relationships to country. There were also images of Baird’s family and Kuku Yalanji community revealing that for Baird the stakes are high.
I have known Henrietta for well over two decades as student, dancer and collaborator at NAISDA and in many of my first choreographies. I have admired both Etta’s sense of cultural obligation and the creative means by which she magnanimously shares her continuously accumulating knowledge. I remember when she began working at the Royal Botanic Gardens. When she started working at the Gardens, or RBG as she calls it, Etta couldn’t help but expound upon every plant, shrub, bush, grass or tree we passed, informing me whether or not it was native and under which conditions it should be nurtured and/ or eradicated.
Our relationship in the last few years has been increasingly complementary, consisting of an interchangeable transmission of knowledge. I showed Etta how I integrated text and sculptural elements in my dance, while Etta taught me how to translate my Wiradjuri language using her knowledge of her mother tongue as a guide. Etta taught me how to make twine and how to weave with lomandra grasses while I showed her how I use recycled materials to make contemporary artefacts using those traditional crafting techniques.
The performative part of Henrietta’s work is similarly embedded with much of the knowledge she has acquired since beginning her commitment to the environment through her engagement with RBG. Through her use of iridescent paint in combination with her extensive use of jackets in Plant a Promise Etta illustrated references to both the mycelium root like structure which joins the plants that it is attached to, forming underground networks, and epicormic growth, which is precipitated in plants in the aftermath of fire. This we, as audience members, may or may not have overtly gleaned in the work, however this is how in Aboriginal culture we embed the dance with clues as to how to be in the world, as a part of the overall fabric of it.
By far the most important aspect to Henrietta’s work is her provocation to voice an individual commitment to the environment from us upon placing leaves and branches in the trees in the forest she has also woven. This participatory act leads to another where each audience member is given their own seedling for which they are beholden to nurture.
This holistic approach is one that Henrietta extended to her creative team, from Elder Aunties Leonie Coleman, Reatha Williams & Lois Baird, Uncle Allan Baird, the dancer collaborators in Andrea Adidi, Harlisha Newie and Tara Robinson, to the sound designer Andrew Batt Rawden, set and costume designer/ collaborator in Lara Week, the digital media artist in Marian Abboud, and lighting designer in Priyanka Martin, creative producer Pippa Bailey, production manager Annie Winter and myself. It is both her strength and her challenge to conduct her very important Australian Indigenous cultural work through the lens of contemporary dance and art. From someone who has navigated this road for nearly three decades, I can state with certainty that it is tricky, sometimes being forced to choose and or compromise the form and function of Indigenous tradition with the aesthetic that pleases a predominantly western sensibility and literacy. But rather than bemoan this predicament it can also be a joy to put one’s hand up and simply say, “ Challenge accepted.”
It takes a village doesn’t seem like such a chlichéd sentiment in this context. Having said that, I am so proud of our local talent and input. So, until next year I bid Sydney Festival 2025 adieu.
Vicki Van Hout
FORM Dance Projects
Blogger in Residence