Artistic Co-director, Director & Creative Producer
Rachael Swain is a Pākehā director, dramaturg and performance researcher of Scottish/Irish/English descent. She was born on the lands of the Ngāi Tahu, Aotearoa and lives on Gadigal land, Sydney. She is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Marrugeku with Yawuru/Bardi dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram, working together in collaboration with large and diverse teams of artists for 30 years. Rachael supports collaborative concept development and intercultural, intersectional and intermedial collaborations for live and digital performance works. She has co-conceived and directed Marrugeku’s productions Mimi (1996), Crying Baby (2001), Burning Daylight (2006), Cut the Sky (2015/2024), Jurrungu Ngan-ga (2022) and Ngurragabu (forthcoming 2026). With Dalisa Pigram she co-directed Buru (2010), Ngalimpa (2018) and This is Australia (Marrugeku’s first dance video for YouTube). Her dramaturgy credits include Gudirr Gudirr (2013), Le Dernier Appel (2018) and projects within Marrugeku’s Burrbgaja Yalirra programs. Together with Dalisa she has co-curated Marrugeku’s four Australian-Pacific Indigenous-Intercultural Choreographic Labs (2009–2015) and two dramaturgy research laboratories: ‘Dance and Cultural Dramaturgies in Contested Lands’ (2022–23). Rachael trained at EDDC (The European Dance Development Centre) Arnhem; DAS ARTS (The Amsterdam School for Theatre and Dance Research) and in Film and Video Production (UTS Sydney). She completed a doctorate on intercultural dramaturgies at University of Melbourne (2010) and currently holds a part-time postdoctoral research fellowship at UNSW. She is the author of Dance in Contested Land— new intercultural dramaturgies (2020) and co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange (2021).
