MACMILLAN Dance in Contested Land: New Intercultural Dramaturgies (New World Choreographies)

This book traces an engagement between intercultural dance company Marrugeku and unceded lands of the Yawuru, Bunuba, and Nyikina in the north west of Australia. In the face of colonial legacies and extractive capitalism, it examines how Indigenous ontologies bring ecological thought to dance through an entangled web of attachments to people, species, geologies, political histories, and land. Following choreographic interactions across the multiple subject positions of Indigenous, settler, and European artists between 2012–2016 the book closely examines projects such as Yawuru/Bardi dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram’s solo Gudirr Gudirr (2013) and the multimedia work Cut the Sky (2015). Dance in Contested Land reveals how emergent intercultural dramaturgies can mediate dance and land to revision and reorientate kinetics, emotion, and responsibilities through sites of Indigenous resurgence and experimentation. Review “Swain’s book will undoubtedly make a robust and timely scholarly contribution. It is because I myself write from the perspective of an immigrant to Australia, and in many ways as an outsider … .” (Australasian Drama Studies, Vol. 77, October, 2020) From the Back Cover This book traces an engagement between intercultural dance company Marrugeku and unceded lands of the Yawuru, Bunuba, and Nyikina in the north west of Australia. In the face of colonial legacies and extractive capitalism, it examines how Indigenous ontologies bring ecological thought to dance through an entangled web of attachments to people, species, geologies, political histories, and land. Following choreographic interactions across the multiple subject positions of Indigenous, settler, and European artists during a period of intense choreographic development for the company between 2012–2016 the book closely examines projects such as Yawuru/Bardi dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram’s solo Gudirr Gudirr (2013) and the multimedia work Cut the Sky (2015). Dance in Contested Land reveals how emergent intercultural dramaturgies can mediate dance and land to revision and reorientate kinetics, emotion, and responsibilities through sites of Indigenous resurgence and experimentation. About the Author Rachael Swain is a settler director, dramaturg, and researcher of intercultural and trans-disciplinary dance and performance. She was born on the lands of the Ngāi Tahu in Aotearoa/New Zealand and works between the lands of the Gadigal in Sydney and the lands of the Yawuru in Broome, Australia. Rachael is co-artistic director of Marrugeku with Yawuru/Bardi dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram.