Listen to the revolution: Disrupting the 250+ year silence

“Is this the Commonwealth of Australia? Yes? This is your Landlords speaking!”

As part of UnWrapped 2024, an ongoing series of works by outstanding independent creators, we’re excited to welcome SILENCE to our iconic venue. SILENCE is a powerful contemporary dance work from Karul Projects. The work disrupts a 250+ year silence, ushering in an urgent call for TREATY. 

Alongside dance and thrashing drumming, humour is interwoven throughout the show, exploring poignant moments in Australian history. These flashbacks are moments of victory, portraying First Nations peoples’ perseverance in the face of adversity.

Jhindu Lawrie’s audacious, raw and powerful rock drumming matches perfectly with Thomas E.S. Kelly’s choreography and the images he creates. This combination makes the dance sequences thrilling to watch. You can feel the power from the performers’ physicality and focus.

SILENCE is brought to you by Karul Projects. Created by Thomas E.S. Kelly (Minjungbal-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu), and Taree Sansbury (Kaurna, Narrungga and Ngarrindjeri) in 2017, Karul Projects focuses on bringing First Nations bodies, stories and voices to the forefront. 

The pair met in 2010 at NAISDA Dance College on the Central Coast of New South Wales. After graduation, they embarked on their careers together, creating their own dance-theatre works, choreographing and performing for companies nationally. 

There’s silence between the stars as the Emu travels across the night sky. There’s silence in the dancer’s energy when they hit the cut, the rupture between rhythms and movement creating a vibrational glitch for the spirit world to enter. It’s also the deafening silence under white noise. 

They saw a need to create more opportunities for employment and skill building with a focus on First Nations artists, so they founded Karul Projects. Through the company, they provide more pathways for artists and audiences into First Nations culture and arts.

In 2018 they relocated to the Gold Coast, to help grow the local artistic community. It was there they began work on their biggest and most ambitious show to date, SILENCE.

You like your contemporary dance with a powerful message behind it or are familiar with Bangarra Dance Theatre’s amazing works such as Terrain, Our Land People Stories and Bennelong.

SILENCE runs from 8 - 11 of May in the Studio. Watch the trailer to get a sneak peek of the powerful performance and book your tickets to SILENCE.