Jurrungu Ngan-ga (Straight Talk)
Created by Marrugeku
Dancers: Czack (Ses) Bero, Emmanuel James Brown, Chandler Connell, Luke Currie-Richardson, Issa el Assaad, Macon Escobal Riley, Bhenji Ra, Feras Shaheen, Miranda Wheen
Black Swan Theatre Company, State Theatre Centre, Perth until September 23

Among the Yawuru people of Western Australia’s Kimberley region the expression “Jurrungu Ngan-ga” is a powerful cultural term denoting the kind of “straight talk” that allows relatives to sort out differences before they blow up into conflicts.

It was Senator Pat Dodson who suggested to Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain, the co-artistic directors of the Broome-based Marrugeku ensemble that they express the concept in dance. The result is a searing representation of the Australian national obsession with incarceration.

On a bare stage backed by a metallic construction that serves variously as border line, prison, refugee detention centre and projection screen for a CCTV camera, the nine dancers generate astonishing energy as they interrogate white Australia’s capacity to lock away and isolate that which it fears.

Besides Pat Dodson, Marrugeku turned to Iranian-Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian and Kurdish/Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani for inspiration and advice.

The dancing communicates the terror and heartbreak of murderous dispossession, paranoia and violence of brutal imprisonment and anger and grief at deaths in custody. But it also portrays strength in diversity and power in unity.

The soundtrack reinforces the performance with sounds of people crying, dingoes howling, breezes rustling leaves and heavy-duty industrial clanging.

Marrugeku have toured the world with Jurrungu Ngan-ga to great acclaim. They were invited to perform at last year’s Sydney Festival but refused in solidarity with the Palestinians as the Festival accepted Israeli government funding.

Jurrungu Ngan-ga premiered to sell out houses with great audience feedback and reviews at Carriageworks, outside of the Sydney Festival.

The Marrugeku performers include transexual people, Torres Strate Islanders, Aboriginal people and refugees. The intersectionality vibrates throughout and the hard work of international touring pays off in the tight physicality of the choreography.

The opening night audience gave a rousing standing ovation, demanding curtain calls. Following the performance, the audience was directed to information in the foyer about actions they can take.

As Bertolt Brecht famously said: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Jurrungu Ngan-ga certainly holds true to that. And it also holds true to another statement of Brecht’s: “For art to be unpolitical means only to ally itself with the ruling group.”