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YIRRAMBOI Festival 2019

YIRRAMBOI Festival 2019

By Sakshi Agrawal

Australia’s premier first peoples’ art and cultural event, YIRRAMBOI Festival, will fill Southbank and the city with close to 100 events across 25 different venues from May 2 to 12.

Curated by creative director, Boonwurrung woman Caroline Martin, the 2019 program is packed with free and low-cost events across dance, music, film, theatre, exhibitions, fashion parades, markets, talks and symposia.

Ms Martin said that, in the shared languages of the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung people, YIRRAMBOI means “tomorrow” and the program was all about what’s next.

“While the cultures belong to first peoples, it is our shared history, and our chance to create the vision for the future,” Ms Martin said.

Having a future-focused celebration, it will showcase and demonstrate the diversity and evolution of the longest living cultures of first peoples and also the unique talents, innovative and modern practices of first nations’ creative people.

Witness-acclaimed international acts include 13 artists from Taiwan’s Pulima Arts Festival, while Canada’s Talk is Free Theatre will be staged on a moving bus.

The festival’s hub, YIRRAMBOI Weelam, will be housed in North Melbourne’s Meat Market. The location will have food stalls, bars, and communal fire in the courtyard where the audience can cosy up before and after shows at the venue.

The venue will have a range of events like live music from Bad Apples Music House Party, talent-based beauty pageant Miss First Nation, and many more.

Learn about the “Six Seasons of Kulin” and have a bush food experience of the first nations’ people at Royal Botanic Gardens. On May 4, The Art Centre Melbourne’s Hamer Hall will be taken over by Yothu Yindi’s The Treaty Project and Dis Rupt performed by a team of 10 emerging artists led by Kate ten Buuren.

Other events at Southbank are Negotiating Home X Red Earth, a dance piece by artists Carly Sheppard and Watan Tusi, which also includes a First Nations’ Dance and Music Workshop by them at Chunky Move Studio on May 10 and 11. The Bombini Buzz at Arts Centre Melbourne will feature Tiriki Onus on May 8 and Rachael Maza on May 9 who will share stories about the Blak culture in Australia.

Experience contemporary Hawaiian music on May 8, with transgender mother daughter duo, Kekuhi and Kanaka’ole, as they perform Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole at the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Elizabeth Murdoch Hall. Portland’s premier drag clown performer, Anthony Hudson, will take over The Wheeler Centre on May 11 with his workshop that explores the history and future of drag and gender. Not only enclosed locations, but also the underpass at Flinders Street Station will feature Kabu Kabi avant-composer, William Elm, who will perform Yauar, a durational musical drone on May 4.

One highlight of the festival, as part of the Knowledge Industry Network (KIN) initiative, will feature works by four emerging Victorian-based practitioners - Kalaji’s Night River will be the first major work under the musical alias of Helpman Award winning actor Mark Coles Smith, Blood Quantum performed by Ngioka Bunda-Heath, Daddy by Jeol Bray will examine colonial condition and a solo act on the theme of suicide by Jack Sheppard.

The Melbourne Town Hall will be filled with two world premiere performances of Naretha William’s Black Mass, a sound-work which considers the Grand Organ as a significant symbol of European domination, and Dan Sultan, an ARIA award-winning rock legend who will be supported by Alice Skye and Kalaji.

Another highlight is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, which will be honoured by The Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL) by presenting two symposiums by Lee Healy and Harley Dunolly-Lee. They will be exploring how the languages of First Nations are essential to cultural strengthening, health and wellbeing, education and reconciliation.

The YIRRAMBOI festival is rich in history, yet innovative and will bring the Aboriginal culture to all Melburnians. A chance for everyone to celebrate together, it has something for everyone.

yirramboi.net.au

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