Gudirr Gudirr

ADELAIDE PREMIERE DANCE AUSTRALIA

Marrugeku

The guwayi bird calls a warning to signal when the tide is turning – miss the call, and you risk drowning. For thousands of years, this call has guided Aboriginal people of the northwest region of Australia and kept them safe from harm. Equal parts hesitant, restless, resilient, and angry, Gudirr Gudirr calls a warning to a community facing massive industrialisation on traditional lands, loss of language, and major gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous wellbeing. Performed by Dalisa Pigram, a Yawuru and Bardi woman with Malay and Filipino heritage, Gudirr Gudirr reaches into Australia’s history and asks important questions: What does it take to decolonise the minds of Aboriginal people? How do we take a broken past, shift through a fragile present, and create a brighter future? In collaboration with Belgian choreographer Koen Augustijnen and artist Vernon Ah Kee, Pigram creates a dance language that captures this moment in time for her people.

Gudirr Gudirr was co-commissioned by the City of Melbourne through Arts House, Theater Im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, and funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW, and the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.

SPACE THEATRE THU 3 NOV 8pm FRI 4 NOV 8pm SAT 5 NOV 8pm + Q&A SUN 6 NOV 8pm

DURATION 60 mins ADULT $49 CONCESSION $45

Warning: Coarse language, adult themes

“An extraordinary work from an artist at the peak of her craft and intellectual confidence…unmissable”

The Guardian