The Reckoning

Image credit Emma Fishwick

by Joshua Pether Projects, Kalkadoon 

The Reckoning is a durational performance ritual drawing upon the knowledges locked within the performer’s own body that are the result of our traumatic past history and this drives and moves the performance. Audiences are invited to ‘witness’ this event unfold whilst also allowing a sense of contemplation to occur in relation to our bloody and colonial history. At the heart of the reckoning is an understanding that we must acknowledge our traumatic past as a country and also create a way to move forward. The Reckoning also becomes a site specific work that will be performed across various sites of historical interest where past traumatic events have occurred. 

The Reckoning is funded by Australia Council through Signature Works initiative. The Reckoning is supported by PICA and BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.

Dear Brother

Image supplied by Queensland Theatre

By Lenny Donahue, Djabuganjdji and Tibian Wyles, Girramay and Kalkadoon
Directed by Isaac Drandic, Noongar

THE RIGHT TO A RITE OF PASSAGE.

Young men from different corners of Queensland blow into the big smoke burning with unbridled energy, desire and confusion. Each of them filled with the need to escape, to make something of their lives, to defy the hand that life has dealt them. An individual ignition has driven them all to Brisbane but something else — something ancestral — will bring them together.

Caught between adolescence and adulthood, these young fellas will converge and wrestle with themselves, each other, their ghosts and a deep-etched sense of duty to Country. Together they’ll lay themselves bare and bond as brothers over what it means to be a young Aboriginal man in 2024.

This high energy work, presented with BlakDance as part of Brisbane Festival, is all about giving today’s young Murri men a voice, one that challenges the narrative around public perceptions of Aboriginal masculinity.

Using dance, music and poetry, this form-defying work features Djabuganjdji man Lenny Donahue and Girramay and Kalkadoon man Tibian Wyles in a tour-de-force performance that is as physical as it is heartfelt.

Premiering September 2024

Dates 7 — 28 Sep

Location Bille Brown Theatre

Dear Bother is co-produced by BlakDance, with Queensland Theatre

Garabari

by Joel Bray Dance, Wiradjuri

Garabari means Corroboree in Wiradjuri and will be a large-scale new work by Wiradjuri choreographer Joel Bray in co-production with CHUNKY MOVE, Victoria’s leading contemporary dance company. The Wiradjuri are called The People of the Three Rivers and Garabari will be a contemporary Corroboree celebrating rivers as the veins of Country and as the ancient songlines and trade routes that have always connected the many Peoples of this continent. The work will be developed over a series of creative developments in Melbourne and out on Wiradjuri Country.

“This work has been appearing in my dreams. Sometimes it is a series of pilgrimages through manicured gardens, sometimes it is a massive rave in a warehouse, sometimes it is a collection of canoes on the river with the audience watching from the riverbank. Sometimes it is on the stage. Perhaps it will happen in all of these places.“ - Joel Bray

Garabari is funded by Australia Council through Signature Works initiative. Garabari is supported by BlakDance, through BlakForm. BlakForm is funded through Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.