Colonised bodies as sites of silent protest: MONOLITH features at Arts House

Joel Bray Dance’s work, MONOLITH, is set to perform at Arts House from June 3 to 15, echoing and paying tribute to the spirit of protest, resistance and rebellion.

“Our Elders sat on Freedom Ride buses and in Tent Embassies. They sat and endured the indignities of rotten fruit and the brutalities of arrest,” Wiradjuri artist and creator Joel Bray said.

With the delicate and powerful rhythm of the composer, Matthias Schack-Arnott, and a dystopian island designed by artist Jake Preval, five female dancers, all covered in purple paint, present the confrontation against colonial forces in a muscular and androgynous dance language.

The composition reminds people of a monolith – the ancient rock landscape resists the process of deforestation and urbanisation in the surrounding country.

Bray added: “As we developed MONOLITH, we spoke about our Elders’ experiences, the power of silence and the act of taking up space. We danced together as a declaration of group power.”

Naarm-based Joel Bray is a Wiradjuri dancer, performance-maker and artist director of Joel Bray Dance. His dance-theatre focuses on performing the intersection site of Indigenous heritage, skin-colour and Queer sexuality through the body in unorthodox spaces.

Collaborating with Elders, community and Country, his work often uses humour to involve the audience in rituals related to sex, history, trauma and healing.

“I felt that it would be most powerful to make a work about protest and about ‘taking up space’ and ‘being heard’ with the very group who are usually made to be invisible and silenced,” Bray said.

“I have performed in most of my previous performance works, so they have often spoken to the Queer male experience. But, in MONOLITH, I really wanted to work with a group of young Brown women.”

Bray is best known for his highly interactive and immersive dance-theatre works. This time, MONOLITH will show the audience to once again explore the charm of collaborative dance creation.

“So MONOLITH is a very femme work. Every move and moment has been crafted in collaboration with these incredible young women. MONOLITH feels Queer in that these women staunchly step up, hold space and offer their bodies as both challenge and obstacle in an honouring of the generations of Brown women protestors who have come before.”

“I’m sure audiences will feel both a sense of awe for the performers and a sense of strange comfort that, no matter what happens, Country will come through and survive.”

Arts House acting artistic director Olivia Anderson said it was a privilege to present MONOLITH with RISING.

“Joel Bray Dance is renowned and celebrated for creating thought-provoking and electrifying works. MONOLITH promises to be transformational,” Anderson said.

“RISING is where to discover what’s new in art, music and performance. Revealing a connection between people and land through his unique choreography, Joel Bray’s MONOLITH is a powerful and exciting new work,” RISING co-artistic director Gideon Obarzanek said.