Marrugeku dives deep into Rubibi/Broome’s Southeast Asian and indigenous cultures, fusing dance and martial arts traditions to explore the complex history of the pearling industry in Mutiara, presented at Perth Festival during its opening weekend.
Marrugeku’s co-artistic director and co-devising performer Dalisa Pigram is joined by Soultari Amin Farid, Zee Zunnur, and Ahmat Bin Fadal, whose personal history as an ex-pearl diver helped shape the creation of Mutiara. The work draws on his experiences and his brush with death, and features his practice of Silat, a Southeast Asian martial arts tradition. Farid brings Malaysian traditional dance forms to the fore, featuring a solo Minangkabau piring dance using shells instead of plates. Zunnur adds a strong contemporary dance voice to the quartet, especially when she represents the Bomoh (a traditional medicine person). Pigram draws upon Yawuru dance traditions and language to highlight the intertwined histories of First Nations and Asian peoples.
Mutiara takes an exploratory approach to the histories, sensations, and ideas surrounding its complicated subject matter. Most of the work has something of a narrative arc, but some portions linger a bit longer in a pure movement space. For those less versed in dance languages from a practitioner’s standpoint might struggle to derive meaning from these scenes. The piece’s tone is, understandably, dark, but there are moments of light, such as the opening partner dance between Farid and Pigram, which helps establish time and place through a jukebox playlist that includes “The Twist” by Chubby Checker.
Set designer Abdul-Rahman Abdullah has created a long rope set piece that hangs from a track and can be pulled and sculpted by the performers; it serves as a ‘screen’ onto which historical images related to the pearling industry are projected. Aside from being practically useful as a set piece, the ropes imply other forms, like underwater plants and the ropes to which the divers are tethered. Lights by Kelsey Lee help to establish tone and place, creating mood through transverse, warm and cool lighting that evokes land and ocean in equal measure.
Mutiara is a thoughtful and intriguing cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural co-creation which brings pearls of truth and beauty to the surface. Its blending of traditions, styles, and lived experiences creates a darkly harmonious but tender dance work that honours the people who lived and died in the waters of Rubibi.
CICELY BINFORD
Mutiara was presented at Perth Festival from 9 – 12 Feb at the Studio Underground as part of Perth Festival. For more information, visit here.
