A Powerful ‘Call to Arms’ launches NAISDA’s Performance Season of First Nations Dance at Carriageworks 25 Sep 2024

Sydney, Australia: NAISDA’s highly anticipated end-of-year performance season featuring leading First Nations choreographers, dance artists and storytellers, is set to debut at Carriageworks from 21-23 November. 

Timely, pressing, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, the trees have voices, the feet have ears is a powerful call to re-examine our relationship with nature. Directed by multi-award-winning choreographer Vicki Van Hout, the performance uses contemporary and cultural dance, film, spoken word and sculptural set design to deliver an urgent message about the need to reconnect with Country. 

Van Hout said: “This year’s production takes up the urgent call. We hear it on the wind as a roaring plea or as a cry from the trees as they catch fire. It’s mirrored in the alarm of emergent generations inheriting a legacy of unchecked consumption and neglect.” 

“In the Dreaming, all known and unknown things are sentient, interconnected within an animate and overarching entity. Instead of manipulating and mediating everything for human convenience through circuits, motherboards, and virtual clouds, the trees have voices, the feet have ears proposes a reassertion of a dedicated, embodied rapport with Country”.  

The production features guest choreography by acclaimed NAISDA alumni Glory Tuohy-Daniell and Henrietta Baird. Tuohy-Daniell’s poetic work breaks the buffer between us and the natural world, while interdisciplinary performance-maker Henrietta Baird amplifies the increasing impact and frequency of global extreme weather events. The production is framed by Cultural Tutor and Songman Dujon Niue, who brings the spirit, songs, and dances of the Torres Strait Island community of St Pauls to the Carriageworks stage.   

Performed by NAISDA’s 2024 cohort of emerging dance artists, this production enables Sydney audiences to witness their creative talents before they embark upon careers that will see them performing to audiences nationwide and globally. This extraordinary performance of First Nations creativity, culture, energy, attitude, and execution continues NAISDA’s nearly 50-year legacy at the forefront of First Nations performing arts training.  

the trees have voices, the feet have ears forms part of Carriageworks’ newly introduced Carriageworks Moves program, which features a season of circus, dance and movement works from October.

NAISDA’s the trees have voices, the feet have ears will be presented at Carriageworks from 21-23 November. 

Tickets are on sale here: https://my.carriageworks.com.au/overview/1466/

IMAGES: Available to download here.