Most of Australia’s well-established contemporary dance companies are based in the country’s capital cities for obvious reasons. That’s where audiences and resources are closest to hand. Adelaide is home to Australian Dance Theatre and Restless Dance Theatre, Brisbane is where you find Australasian Dance Collective, Co3 caters to the Perth audience and so on.

Dancenorth and Marrugeku are the outliers, the first based in Townsville, about 1350km north of Queensland’s capital Brisbane, and the second settled in Broome, more than 2000km from Perth in Western Australia. The best chance of seeing them is at one of the country’s big-city, multi-arts festivals. Or more than one.

Marrugeku’s Mutiara recently had its world premiere at the 2024 Sydney Festival and will be seen at the Perth Festival in February. After premiering at Townsville’s North Australian Festival of Arts in 2022 and appearing at the 2022 Brisbane Festival, Dancenorth’s Wayfinder was picked up by other major festivals for 2024. It’s just been seen in Sydney and then goes to Perth and Adelaide festivals and many other place besides.

Wayfinder is a good-hearted, exuberant response to coming through the pandemic. For choreographers Amber Haines and Kyle Page, respectively Dancenorth’s associate artistic director and the company’s artistic director, it’s about community and connections. Colours are bright, high spirits abound and there’s some non-threatening audience participation that seemed genuinely to delight many at the performance I saw.

White globes that intermittently started glowing were placed around the auditorium, to be picked up and just held or waved as if they held some kind of message to be transmitted from person to person. The audience responded happily and easily.

A further element of participation and connection came with the vast amount of salvaged wool that’s been woven into thick strands by a large cohort of volunteers in Townsville and Brisbane. There’s about 70m of the vibrantly hued stuff in total, used in a variety of ways including a tall abstract sculpture. 

At one point a dancer was hidden under a heap of yarn, looking like a yeti. Strands were brandished like cheerleaders’ streamers and, beautifully, threads were manipulated by the dancers to form long oscillating waves. Piles were created and disassembled.

But what of the dance itself? There was a lot of athletic tumbling, transfers of energy between the crack ensemble of eight, street dance, some striking unison-and-then-not work that summoned thoughts of Indian deities and, near the end, a celebratory burst of activity that was even more colourful than anything that had gone before.

Wayfinder didn’t have much structural clarity but it did have the kind of open-heartedness that comes from celebrating togetherness and coming into the light from the dark. 

Marrugeku never loses the power to grab at the heart in surprising ways. Two years ago Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] over-flowed with huge emotions and a burning desire to give names and faces to jailed First Nations people, long-sequestered refugees and people whose lives defy the norm. It was a big, stirring piece of dance theatre performed with ferocious energy by a cast of 10. 

The subject is Broome’s famous pearling industry, one that in earlier days was notable for its exploitation of workers, including First Nations people and indentured Malays. A topic, in other words, tailormade for Marrugeku’s unique intercultural perspective. 

The industry’s history would lead one to expect a work bristling with anger but Mutiara defied that expectation. It didn’t shy away from wrongs but Mutiara is not a polemic. Constructed from personal experiences and shards of history, it’s a surprisingly delicate, otherworldly memory piece into which one had to lean.

The look, designed by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, was spare. There were pearl shells in a heap near the front of the stage and a wonderfully fluid rope curtain that spoke of the sea and doubled as a screen on which images from the old days could be projected. 

Kelsey Lee’s beautiful lighting kept most of the space in a semi-dark state while directing the eye where it needed to go. From time to time voices from the past were heard, official voices that dispassionately described how the Malays and “natives” were considered and to be treated. (Spoiler alert: not well.)

In keeping with this relative austerity there were only four performers, among them Ahmat Bin Fadal, a former pearl diver who came to Broome in 1962. It was wonderful to see a wise, older body on stage fully engaged with a work inspired by and filtered through his story. 

Mutiara, though, is far from being a biography. Moods, impressions, expressions of Malay culture, intimations of what working underwater feels like, a sense of dislocation (and worse) on the part of First Nations workers, an element of mysticism and more are threads woven into a mesmerising whole.

The movement language is fluid, as you might expect, but strongly centred and connected to the performers’ individual traditions. Zee Zunnur’s sweeping evocation of a Malay spirit and Dalisa Pigram’s trenchant Saltwater Woman solo were particularly resonant.

Pigram, a Yarrawu/Bardi woman from Broome and Marrugeku’s co-artistic director, co-choreographed Mutiara with Zunnur and Soultari Amin Farid (he also appeared in it). “Nomadic Malay” Zunnur and Farid are both from Singapore but work globally.

The work felt deeply personal to each of those three as it did for  Ahmat Bin Fadal. All were charismatic presences on stage. 

Composer and sound designer Safuan Johari’s soundscape was absolutely crucial to Mutiara’s impact, seamlessly melding different cultural references – including Chubby Checker’s The Twist – with an atmospheric summoning of clanking industry, the sea and the act of diving. Mutiara blossomed in its embrace. 

Mutiara is at the Perth Festival from February 9-12.

Wayfinder is at the Perth Festival from February 29-March 3 and the Adelaide Festival from March 15-17.

The review of Mutiara first appeared online for Limelight magazine.