Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul (2020)
Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul was a curated place-responsive program of performances, workshops, public art and walks offering sensory, aesthetic and cultural experiences of the forest sites of Kalorama and Mount Dandenong.
Corhanwarrabul (the Dandenong Ranges) has long been a place of dance and ceremony, as a site for gatherings of the Wurundjeri people and other Kulin Nation tribes. This program invited contributions from performing artists whose work focuses upon ‘place’, foregrounding First Nations dance alongside diverse non-Indigenous artists’ responses to the sites, some from local perspectives, and some from Melbourne or further afield. The timing of the program was amongst Melbourne’s Covid-19 lockdowns, which restricted our live audiences, but inspired hybrid formats such as a Sensory Walk that participants could undertake on their own with creative prompts for exploration along the path, designed by Environmental Performance Authority with Laki Sideris.
Audiences/participants were invited to listen with all of their senses to this place.
Curator: Gretel Taylor
Cultural consultant: Murrundindi
Artists: Djirri Djirri, Gülsen Özer, Dani-Ela Kayler, Vivienne Rogis, Gretel Taylor, Environmental Performance Authority (EPA), Laki Sideris, Tammy Wong Hulbert & Marnie Badham
Photography and videos: Laki Sideris.
Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul was supported by Yarra Ranges Council and RidgeWalk (ngurrak barring).
Wominjeka Ngarrga (Welcome Dance)
Djirri Djirri: Kiera Hunter, Hailey George, Mandy Nicholson
Thanks to Lynette George.
If Only They Could Talk
Choreographer: Gülsen Özer
Dancers: Abi Li Zhen, Caroline Ellis, Viv Rogis
Lucky are we that walk this place high up.
We go below, to the creeks our teacher.
Our backbones bend, Learning the seasons.
Garlands of purple violets and kangaroo apple blossoms.
Biik Ngarrga (Country Dance)
Djirri Djirri: Kiera Hunter, Hailey George, Mandy Nicholson
Thanks to Lynette George.
Syncopation
Dani-Ela Kayler
A movement study of the gestures of plants responding to wind.
Restless
Gretel Taylor
On a path between the forest and a European garden, Gretel dances the spirit of a local settler colonial woman, and imagines her lingering uneasily as a restless ghost, aware that processes of colonisation continue to impinge upon the present.
Guided Walk
Environmental Performance Authority (EPA)
The Environmental Performance Authority’s role was as audience guides to both the place and the site-based performances, facilitating sensory experiences along the way. Eventually EPA artists led audience groups back for ‘Welcome to the Countryside’, a white-washed colonial picnic in the same site Murrundindi had welcomed us all to Country (see photos in the gallery below). The picnic of scones and jam and cream was an uncomfortable overlay upon the place, mirroring the way settlers have colonised the hills with quaint disregard for the ever present Country and culture that lies beneath.
The performance led into an informal discussion whereby artists and participants reflected upon how the afternoon’s experiences had influenced their impressions of Corhanwarrabul.
Buln Buln Ngarrga (Lyrebird Dance)
Djirri Djirri: Kiera Hunter, Hailey George, Mandy Nicholson
Djirri Djirri developed/re-found the Buln Buln Ngarrga with cultural advice from their elders in 2015 as part of Gretel Taylor and Kate Baker’s project, Dances with Lyrebirds.
Thanks to Lynette George.
