Yolande Brown will collaborate with harpist, Mary Doumany to research the technical and physical possibilities between dancer and harp: the interplay of physical and aural resonance, and culture. Being a Bidjara woman, Yolande is drawn to not only researching her own heritage, but to questioning our Country’s history of assimilation practices and the consequential loss suffered by her family and all First Nations’ people.
Two forces … two cultures … two disciplines … two breaths … inhabiting space and time; within this there can be obliviousness, appreciation, understanding, reciprocity, respect, or on the other hand there can be intrusion, aggravation, domination, subjugation and war.
The artists will explore the inhabitation of a defined space/body, through presence, through movement, and through contact – physically and aurally – and a questioning of how we are inhabited, to varying degrees, by our environs, by the influence of others and by our own emotions. Through physicality, and using three elements – dancer, harp and musician – they will question how the spirit and mind dance in tandem, a delicate balance that can be thrown off kilter by often unbeknown or unrecognised triggers.
Image credit: Jhuny Borja