Cut The Sky is a meditation on humanity’s frailty in the face of our own actions. In a burnt landscape a group of climate change refugees face yet another extreme weather event. Propelled back and forward in time, they revisit conflict with mining companies, the destruction of fauna and relegation of the marginalised, while contemplating the gift of a human life and the life giving force of the sun. Butterflies swarm searching for water, dancers disintegrate into the light, a song is sung calling for rain.
Like climate change itself, Cut the Sky is at once unapologetically local and international, a concept embedded in the collaboration itself, which includes artists from Europe, Asia, Africa and remote and urban Australia. Dance, video, poetry and song collide. All the elements — popular and high art, literal and poetic, indigenous and European — meet abruptly in a breathtaking 70 minutes, creating electric connections.
A work in five acts based on the poems written and spoken by Edwin Lee Mulligan, Cut the Sky includes original songs from soul singer Ngaiire, Indigenous songs by the cast and covers from Nick Cave, sung live with thrilling effect by Ngaire Pigram. The set is bare aside from a gas pipeline thrusting up from the floor of the stage. Backstage is hung a huge length of fabric, its folds visible, serving as a screen for projections. The video design encompasses the literal — broad sweeps of country, the devastation after a cyclone — and the poetic. This ambitious multi-dimensional work showcases Marrugeku’s unique contemporary choreography: restless, taut and unwavering.
The World Premiere of Cut the Sky was at Perth International Arts Festival
27 February – 1 March 2015
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
Poems: Edwin Lee Mulligan
Director: Rachael Swain
Choreographers: Dalisa Pigram and Serge Aimé Coulibaly
Dramaturg: Hildegard de Vuyst
Musical Director: Matthew Fargher
Media designers & visual concept: Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya (Desire Machine Collective)
Set and Costume Designer: Stephen Curtis
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Cultural Adviser: Patrick Dodson
Cast/co-creators:
Miranda Wheen
Ngaire Pigram
Eric Avery
Josh Mu
Dalisa Pigram
Edwin Lee Mulligan
Musicians and vocals in recordings: Lorrae Coffin, Konrad Park, Kelly Ottaway, Andry Sculthorpe, Michael Fortescue and Ruth Langford
Backing Vocals: Kartanya Maynard
Voice of Bill Grayden: Peter Docker
Engineer and production: Don Bate
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, Ludwigshafen, Germany, Carriageworks (Australia, KVS, Brussels (Belgium). Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (LU) and Centre Culturel Tjibaou Nouméa (New Caledonia)
Cut the Sky has been funded by the Australia Council, 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.
