Presented by Salamanca Arts Centre and Mobile States.
Following on from seasons in Brooms and Zurich, Switzerland, Salamanca Arts Centre and Mobile States are proud to present three performances of Burning Daylight at the Princes Wharf 1 Shed.
marrugeku launches the national tour of its explosive yet haunting dance theatre work, Burning Daylight from its origins, the West Australian town of Broome on 28 October 2009.
“We are really exploring the intergenerational ghosts that haunt the young people in Broome now.” Rachael Swain, Director
It’s Karaoke night, Broome style, where country meets hip hop meets Japanese love song. A lone cowboy blows into town, stirring its ghosts for a long and wild night, as past and present dance it out on the street.
The physicality and raw energy of performers is combined with tenderness and beauty. Pumping beats and rhymes create a vibrant contemporary sound live on stage that contrast with gentle guitar strums and melodies evoking outback campfires.
This spectacular high energy production incorporates old and new forms to conjure an image of today’s Broome – the traces of its past as wild frontier town still real, but also mythologised in glossy tourist brochures. Like the rest of the world, a place where young people live out complex identities spanning traditional cultures and globalised, Youtubed everything.
Whips crack, geishas perform ceremony, pearl fisherman take to the sea. Karaoke singers croon and a hip hop MC raps, while memories flicker on screen of their grandparents’ generation’s experiences: White Australia policy deportations, and laws against inter-racial marriage.
Burning Daylight’s Director, Rachael Swain, was inspired by the depiction of Broome at the turn of the 19th to 20thcentury as an “Asian Wild West”. The production features “karaoke noodle western videos” by Warwick Thornton, the award winning Director of Samson and Delilah, music by MC Dazastah of Perth based hip hop crew Downsyde, performances by actor Trevor Jamieson of Ngapartji Ngapartji and Sermsah Bin Saad or Suri, a recent finalist in So You Think You Can Dance.
Forging exciting new ground in contemporary indigenous and intercultural dance theatre in Australia, Burning Daylight was co-choreographed by Belgian based West African Serge Aime Coulibalay (former member of Les Ballets C de la B) and indigenous choreographer Dalisa Pigram from Broome. Marraugeku’s previous works, Mimi(Perth Festival 1996, Dreaming Festival 1997) and Crying Baby (Perth, Sydney and Darwin Festivals 2000-02) were acclaimed by audiences around the country and internationally.
Two years after touring to the prestigious Zurcher Theater Spektakel in Switzerland, Burning Daylight will have its final development back home in Broome, the first project supported by the WA Department of Culture and the Arts’ new Major Production Fund. Burning Daylight is toured by Performing Lines, to the Mobile States circuit of contemporary performance venues in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, with support from the Australia Council and Playing Australia.
Creative Team: Director: Rachael Swain | Co -Choreographers: Serge Aime Coulibaly & Dalisa Pigram | Designer: Joey Ruigrok van der Werven | Cinematographer: Warwick Thornton | Dramaturg: David Pledger | Costume Designer: Stephen Curtis l Lighting Designer: Geoff Cobham l Musical Director: Matthew Fargher l songs by : Amanda Brown
Performers: Trevor Jamieson, Dalisa Pigram, Kathy Cogill, Owen Maher, Sermsah Bin Saad, Antonia Djiagween & Yumi Umiumare Musicians: Dazastah, Lorrae Coffin & Justin Gray
Performances:
Thursday 26 November 2009 at 9:00pm
Friday 27 November 2009 at 9:00pm
Saturday 28 November 2009 at 9:00pm
