Garabari

From producers BlakDance (SILENCE, 2023) with acclaimed choreographer and Wiradjuri artist, Joel Bray, Garabari invites you to plunge into the swirling depths of a new civic ritual and experience culture as a living connection between people and Country.

Bodies, light and sound weave together in a contemporary experience of gathering. Guided by performers, audiences gain a visceral sense of how story, song and dance continue to live and evolve today. Garabari is a powerful gathering where performer and spectator, Indigenous and non Indigenous, all become part of a thrilling dance party.

Developed on Wiradjuri Country with Elders and artists, Garabari shares the Giilang (story and song) of Marramalngidyal Marrambidyagu, the making of the Murrumbidgee River, gifted by the late Uncle James Ingram.

Photographer: Jeff Busby

LIMP writer Kirsten interviews choreographer Joel Bray ahead of Garabari performances at Wollongong Town Hall and Dapto Ribbonwood Centre.

When Joel and I call, it’s off the back of the successful performances of Garabari at the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Festival on the northern boardwalk of the Opera House.

Joel tells me, “I only became a dancer like later in life, but when I was young, I did this weird little gig at eight years old as an extra for the Australian ballet.

“I never thought this little queer kid would come back 35 years later and have like a show outside the Opera House.”

Joel tells me about his journey to becoming a dancer, “It’s a funny story because in school I never did anything like artistic, yeah? Definitely never anything athletic. So, it's ironic that I ended up doing something that combines athletics with with art.”

He went to university for Law but it didn’t feel right.

Joel decided to attend NAISDA Dance College in Sydney (now located on the Central Coast).

He says, “Actually, it wasn't about dancing for me. It was about connecting with my Aboriginal culture. I always grew up knowing I was Aboriginal with my dad and my family.

“I wanted to turn up somewhere every day with all other blackfullas. And then, of course, I arrived, and within the first 15 minutes I was like, ‘Oh my God, this dance thing is amazing.’”

Joel went to train at WAAPA in Perth and have a career overseas dancing and eight years ago, when he came back home he connected his culture and career together and has since created Garabari.

Joel says this performance is important to him because, “Once upon a time, this story would have had a corroboree, which, in our language is garabari. That's where the word comes from.

“I chose that name for this work, but that corroboree has been lost. So, we still have the story, but we don't have the dancers and the songs that would have gone along with it.

“You know, we're not pretending this is the original corroboree for for this story, but we've made a new a new one with the oversight, and in collaboration with the elders and using what knowledge we have, and then creating the rest with artists, and the group of artists that I work with.”

Garabari is a dynamic performance.

Joel says, “It’s not a show where you come in and you sit in the dark and watch all the action happen on stage. Instead, it's just like a corroboree. You come in, you wander around. The dancers move through, around you. They'll come, they'll tell you stories, they'll take you, they'll teach you dances. There's a lot of agency in that as well.”

Garabari calls us to foster community.

“I'd say corroboree is the way we have always encoded, yes, our history, but also our law. Who can marry who? When you can fish the billabong, when you can harvest, all those kinds of law. It's how we encode our understanding of geography.

“It's how we meet potential partners, how we catch up with family, who we haven't seen in a while.”

Joel is passionate about coming together “in an era when we are losing those IRL gathering spaces.”

Ultimately, places where we can share joy. Joel says of Garabari, “The show turns into a party at the end. Spoiler alert!  In the same way, like clubs are our contemporary corroboree space.”

Joel shares moments over Garabari’s run that have been meaningful to him. The first from the opening night of Garabari in 2022.

He shares, “The custodian of this story is the late Uncle James Ingram who unfortunately we lost last year, but we brought the elders down to Melbourne for opening night.

“And now Uncle James loved to yarn. You could barely shut him up, right? But after the opening night, there was a few speeches, and Uncle James was so choked up with emotion at seeing this story brought to life again and that he couldn't talk.

“And then afterwards, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he was like, ‘Son, thank you so much. You brought the corroboree back with this story.’

“I'm just telling you now and I'm getting goosebumps.”

Another moment, he says, was when “this lovely white lady came up to me and she said, ‘Thank you so much. I've always wanted to learn how to do those dances, but I've never felt like I've had the permission to. Thank you so much for creating that invitation space.’”

With these in mind, Joel says, “We need to be actively cultivating spaces in which we gather, that deeply human thing to be in each other's presence and to navigate each other's spaces.”

You can tickets to Garabari here

Wollongong Town Hall

Fri 6 Feb, 7.30pm - Allocation Exhausted

Sat 7 Feb, 7.30pm

Dapto Ribbonwood Centre

Sat 14 Feb, 1.30pm & 7.30pm