A performance so intimate, so honest, so expressive that attendance feels like a privilege – this rare event comes as Dalisa Pigram represents Broome and the Kimberley in Perth as part of this year’s NAIDOC Week celebrations. Saturated in honesty, tackling issues of modern Aboriginal identity, presenting personal experiences and frustrations, Pigram does not pay token tribute anywhere but dives deep to present sweet memories, angry frustration and anguished witness. On a purely physical level, Pigram astounds by pursuing an hour of solo dance incorporating inspiration from martial arts, gymnastics, traditional forms, animal imitations and a distinctly contemporary disregard for boundaries between these various disciplines.
Gudirr Gudirr opens and closes with the warning call of the guwayi bird as the tide turns. Pigram presents an absorbing narrative of a childhood fishing trip with her father, delivered in Pidgin and holding attention with her comic timing, charismatic delivery and evocative movements. The anti-greed moral of the story, told from the child’s perspective, resonates with the following parts of the work. Pigram follows the history of her Asian and Aboriginal ancestry, as well as her Worcestershire tribe, and emphasises the end of much of the institutionalised discrimination and disadvantage that has marked the experience of her forebears since colonial settlement. However, this celebration of endings segues into some hard truths about the present, the selling of land to mining interests, rise of indigenous child suicide and increased levels of casual recreational violence, with a call to her people to take control of their future direction as a community.
Pigram’s personal experiences are emphasised in her frustration with bureaucratic determination to put her in a box and define her sense of self. The spoken frustration is echoed in her movements, which defy simple categorisation, much as her ancestry, views of modern indigenous identity and hopes and fears for the future defy simple box ticking exercises.
Text is closely interwoven with the dance, with a silent prologue of a report on mixed race breeding recommendations from 1928, scrolling up the colourbond screen behind the performance space, and Pigram’s direct delivery of spoken text and combined spoken outbursts with responsive surtitles of key points. Similarly, the musical accompaniment is intimately entangled with the choreography, matching the changing topics, fluctuating styles of performance and rapidly shifting dynamics in energy levels. Pigram’s movements are met with heartbeat-like dull thud of strummed guitar as she quietly stalks and poses, but her aerobatic feats are accompanied by a celebration of chords, drums and vocals as she flies across the stage.
Video projection on the colourbond screen is subtle but also thoughtfully prepared and matched to the choreography. Landscapes, animals, portraits of family members provide scope for contemplation, contrasting with phone camera recordings of fights, the fallout of casual littering and the devastation of mining.
Simple staging is effective, the only props a fishing net hung from the ceiling rig and a corded microphone on its stand in the corner. Pigram uses these to great effect, not as gimmicks but as strong punctuation to her performance. The net makes its mark as an actual net, also as a hammock and then as a coarsely-textured tissu, allowing Pigram to exploit all levels of the available performance space.
A humbling, exhilarating, compelling and thoughtfully compiled performance, Gudirr Gudirr is brilliant contemporary dance theatre to stir the spirit.
Rating: 5 stars out of 5​
Gudirr Gudirr
Presented by Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company and Marrugeku
Concept and Co-Choreographer: Dalisa Pigram
Director and Co-Choreographer: Koen Augustijnen
Set Designer & Video Artist: Vernon Ah Kee
Sound Designer: Sam Serruys
Singer & Songwriter: Stephen Pigram
Lighting Designer: Matthew Marshall
Concept & Cultural Advisor: Patrick Dodson
Dramaturge & Creative Producer: Rachel Swain
Video Production: Sam James
Rigging Designer: Joey Ruigrok Van Der Werven
Production Manager: Neil Simpson
Sound & Video Production & Operation: Ella Wufong
Performed by Dalisa Pigram
Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA, Perth Cultural Centre
7-9 July 2015
