The Shire of Broome and Shinju Matsuri presents Marrugeku's Mutiara
Past Event
The cruel, haunting past of the Kimberley’s now famous pearling industry told through intercultural dance and visual art revealing the resilience, love and strength of ancestors.
The work is a celebration of the unsung bond between First Peoples of the Kimberley and seafaring Malay peoples during a time of colonialism exploring the coexistence and the path that often led to love and lifelong companionship.
Mutiara reveals buried truths washed up and left along the shores of time. during an era of colonialism, racism, exploitation, slavery, and stolen children.
Ancestors tell stories, bones speak, ancestral beings feud, seas change and deep beneath the surface the diver yearns for home. Mutiara celebrates, heals and rewrites histories.
Co-choreographers and dancers Dalisa Pigram, Soultari Amin Farid and Zee Zunnur with Broome’s Ahmat Bin Fadal (ex-pearl diver) collaborate with visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, composer Safuan Johari, dramaturg Rachael Swain, costume designer Zoe Atkinson and lighting designer
Kelsey Lee, to reflect on living within multiple shifting frames of identity, culture, faith and belonging.
Drawing on Yawuru and Minangkabau dance forms as well as silat and diasporic connections to land and sea to create a new dance language that disrupts binaries of identity and the borders of the nation state.