The dramaturgies of listening to Country

Abstract:

This chapter unpacks the concept of ‘listening to Country’ engaged to discuss making, performing and attending intercultural dance on Indigenous land. After introducing Marrugeku, a dance theatre company whose practice forms the primary case study for the book, the chapter gives an overview of new dramaturgies, expanded dramaturgies and Indigenous dramaturgies. Through examples from Marrugeku’s production Crying Baby (2000) directed by the author and created in the Kunwinjku community of Kunbarlanja, in remote northern Australia, the chapter explains dramaturgies to make place and time visible, dramaturgies of incompleteness and the role of the cultural dramaturg. The chapter introduces a discussion of the fundamental ways listening to Country differs from the ‘dance in nature’ of the early modernists that will be expanded in the following chapters.