IICL1 SYDNEY, 2009

The first Laboratory was a partnership between Critical Path and Marrugeku and was held at held at the Drill Hall in Sydney. and led by Maori performance artist Charles Koroneho and Serge Aimé Coulibaly, artistic director of Faso Danse Theatre from Burkina Faso.

Charles Koroneho has worked as an artist in the fields of culture, performance, visual arts and education. As the director of Te Toki Haruru, he has developed work exploring choreography, performance direction, interculturalism and performance art. His projects often examine political resistance and the collision between Maori cosmology, New Zealand society and global cultures. Koroneho’s approach is body centric in training, conceptual in creative projects and collective in the community.

Serge Aimé (Faso Dance Theatre) spent 5 years as a member of Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium, co devising and performing in productions of both Alain Platel and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. His insights brought from contemporary dance in both West Africa and Europe together with his established process of combining traditional and contemporary dance practice provided a dynamic counterpoint to existing Marrugeku member’s considerable experience and perspective in utilising traditional dance practices to create contemporary movement forms.

In addition to the workshop process three forums were held internally for the participants and two open classes were offered for other members of the local dance community (one lead by each of the workshop leaders). Marrugeku’s co-artistic director Dalisa Pigram as well as Serge and Charles each making an opening statement about what contemporary indigenous dance means to them. These far reaching statements were taken as a starting point and open dialogue with contributions from all participants followed over the three forums. Developing Artists from the NAISDA College were invited into both of the classes.