Northern Rivers Dance Residency - featuring Marrugeku

Marrugeku, Australia’s leading Indigenous intercultural dance theatre company visited the Northern Rivers for a series of workshops as a part of a four-day residency sharing their choreographic, cultural and storytelling processes that underpin their approach to making contemporary dance theatre.

From 20 – 23 May 2024, the Marrugeku team worked with four diverse groups in four towns in the region: Youth Dancers in Yamba, School students and Cultural dancers in Casino, Professional Dancers in Tweed Heads and Community Dancers in Byron Bay. Each workshop was designed to cater for the various skills and needs of the differing groups and focused on the relationships between dance, Country and community.

Marrugeku’s 2024 workshop program was led by three dancers/co-choreographers from the company’s Burrbgaja Yalirra program. Meaning Dancing Forwards in Yawuru, the program supports the next generation of changemakers in contemporary, community-connected, intercultural and indigenous dance. Emmanuel James Brown, Stanley Nalo and Miranda Wheen have each been co-devising artists on major works for Marrugeku and have conceived and co-created their own solo or duo projects within Burrbgaja Yalirra.

Marrugeku is led by co-artistic directors, choreographer Dalisa Pigram and director/dramaturg Rachel Swain. Together, over almost three decades, they have collaborated with diverse artists to develop new intercultural dance languages that build bridges between remote and urban dance communities and Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. Based in Yawuru buru (Broome – WA) and the land of the Gadigal (Sydney – NSW) the company engages performers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to co-devise each production, drawing on their own stories and experiences.

The residency is a response to the Dance Sector Uplift project, recently carried out by ANR to revitalise the dance sector in the Northern Rivers and speaks to one of the four key long-term goals highlighted in the report. Hosting such high calibre companies and artists in the region opens a dialogue to stimulate and invigorate dancers, dancemakers, students helps to grow and strengthen audiences.

The project was supported by:

‍