Visceral, vocal and urgent, Cut the Sky exposes the deep fissures that have transformed Indigenous lands into a resource supermarket. Division and inequality, violence and disaster are staged in forms both lyrical and urgent by a diverse cast of Indigenous and settler performers who bring their brave and unblinking perspectives to themes of resilience and repair.
Featuring songs by Ngaiire and Tanya Tagaq, cyclonic choreography and video art capturing epic landscapes — this is dance, theatre, song and storytelling that will not be denied. A riveting pre-apocalyptic odyssey that dares to question the inevitability of climate collapse, Cut the Sky is also a call to imagine alternative futures in which we all play a part.
Images by Prudence Upton and Heidrun Lohr.
The World Premiere of Cut the Sky was at Perth International Arts Festival
27 February – 1 March 2015
2024
Sydney | Carriageworks
4–13 July
2018
The Alexander Kasser Theater | Montclair State University | New Jersey | USA
15–18 November
Harborfront Center | Toronto | Canada
23 & 24 November
2016
Waan Pacific Dance Festival
Centre Culturel Tjibaou
Noumea, New Caledonia
16-18 September 2016
Performance Climates Festival Psi22
Meat Market Arts House
Melbourne
6 – Sun 10 July 2016
Sydney Festival 2016
Sydney Opera House
14-17 January 2016
2015
EUROPEAN TOUR 2015
Theater Im Pfalzbau
14 & 15 October 2015
Ludwidshafen, Germany
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
20 October 2015
Luxembourg
Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS)
22, 23 & 24 October 2015
Brussels, Belgium
WA REMOTE TOUR 2015
The Boardwalk Theatre
7 & 8 August 2015
Mandurah Performing Arts Centre
Ormsby Terrace, Mandurah
Pigram Garden Theatre
14–16 August 2015
Broome Civic Centre
Broome
Mowanjum Art and Culture Centre
22 August 2015
Ardyaloon Community
27 & 28 August 2015
WOMADelaide
7 & 8 March 2015
Stage 2
Adelaide
Perth International Arts Festival
27 February – 1 March
World Premiere
Regal Theatre, 474 Hay Street, Subiaco
Cut the Sky is collaboratively created by:
Concept: Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain with Patrick Dodson
Director: Rachael Swain
Choreographers: Dalisa Pigram and Serge Aimé Coulibaly
Cultural Dramaturg: Patrick Dodson
Dramaturg: Hildegard de Vuyst
Poems: Edwin Lee Mulligan
Additional Text: Dalisa Pigram and Miranda Wheen with Rachael Swain
Media Artists: Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya
Musical Director and Sound Designer: Matthew Fargher
Songwriter: Ngaiire
Set and Costume Designer: Stephen Curtis
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Associate Lighting Designer: Kelsey Lee
Co-devising Performers 2024-25:
Storyteller: Emmanuel James Brown
Dangkaba: Ngaire Pigram
Community: Samuel Hauturu Beazley, Emma Harrison, Dalisa Pigram, Taj Pigram, Miranda Wheen
Richard Cotter
5 Jul 2024
A white canvas, as big and thick as the universe backdrops the performance space, which is dominated by some sort of industrial contraption, a steampunk carbon emitting emblem of the befouling of the atmosphere era that has hastened climate change. In choreography commensurate with the chaos of climate catastrophe, performers, many wrapped in plastic, battle
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Justin Clarke
5 Jul 2024
Blackout. A rush of haze cascades into the space. A slow rhythm hums and drones. White lights slowly rise on an oil drill, pumping minerals offstage. Gasping breaths take over the soundscape as our eyes adjust on the bodies in space, contorting and writhing on their feet, leaning impossibly backwards without falling. Cut the Sky cascades
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Vicki Van Hout
5 Jul 2024
My second activity in the lead up to NAIDOC week was the attendance of Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky, a remount over ten years in the making. Yes, you saw that right, Cut the Sky’s illustrious extended world tour was, like everything else, cut off at the knees by that pesky COVID virus. Cut the Sky
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Margaret Mercer
2 Mar 2015
Broome-based company Marrugeku’s new production Cut The Sky mixes contemporary and traditional music, poetry, contemporary dance and visual media in an entertaining seventy-minute performance. With esteemed Yawuru man Patrick Dodson as cultural adviser, Cut the Sky draws on indigenous knowledge systems to contemplate climate change, land rights, and an uncertain future. Promoted as ’genre defying,’ the
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Terri-Ann White
5 Mar 2015
The world première in Perth of a new work from a Broome-based performance company was an event of considerable note. Twenty-one years of productions made in West Arnhem Land and then in Broome turns conventional wisdoms upside down in Australian terms. Many people still hold that sophisticated cultural work is made in cities and that
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Alison Croggon
6 Mar 2016
There’s no getting around the fact that climate change is the issue of our time. It’s a problem that encompasses every facet of our lives, from our domestic habits to global politics. One of the reasons why it’s difficult to process, quite apart from the difficulty of extending our individual senses of mortality to imagining
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Carol Flavell Neist
3 Mar 2015
Seventy minutes of mind-blowing intercultural and interdisciplinary performance! This was a huge endeavour, involving many, many people. The six performers were just the tip of an enormous iceberg, although when considering a work created by people whose home is in the desert, perhaps iceberg is an inappropriate metaphor. The company, collectively called Marrugeku, hails from
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Cut the Sky was commissioned by Theater Im Pfalzbau (Germany), Carriageworks (Australia), Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg – KVS (Belgium), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Centre Culturel Tjibaou (New Caledonia).
Cut the Sky has been funded by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts, Australian Research Council, Australian Government Attorney General office — Ministry for the Arts, Department of Foreign Affairs, Arts Tasmania and Arts NSW and City of Sydney.
