Listening to Country

In July 2013 Marrugeku presented a three-week research laboratory staged in sites across the Kimberley region of the north west of Western Australia. The lab titled Listening to Country aimed to explore new choreographic processes and cultural dramaturgies emerging from the implications of listening to country at a time of global climate change.
During the process Yawuru Lawman Patrick Dodson, cultural consultant for Listening to Country stated:

In Aboriginal spirituality the complexity created by modernity wasn’t part of where we were.

We now find ourselves in this complexity without having the necessary song, ceremony or dance to interpret the interface of the old and new competing realities. We need to find the new narratives, songs and dance to respect the land, and help us relearn respectful ways to interact with nature, cultures and human aspirations. Marrugeku comes at this challenge from the inside of the cultural life through the celebration of the dance, song, painting and narration. To deliver a celebration of the essence of that connectivity.

Marrugeku equates the “need to find the new narratives, songs and dance to respect the land, and help us relearn respectful ways to interact with nature, cultures and human aspirations” with our work of identifying new cultural dramaturgies which shape and guide our performance practice. The Listening to Country research lab and Symposium was staged in order to share our investigations more widely.

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