Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul

Ways of Seeing

Djirri Djirri dance group, Dani-Ela Kayler, Gretel Taylor, and Gülsen Özer,

guided by artists of Environmental Performance Authority (EPA)

Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul, 2020

Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul was a site-responsive program of performances, workshops, public art and walks curated by BodyPlaceProject. Audience participants were offered sensory, aesthetic, conceptual and cultural experiences relating to Mount Dandenong and Kalorama.

Corhanwarrabul (also spelt goranwarrabil) has long been a place of dance and ceremonial gathering for the Wurundjeri and other Kulin Nation peoples. This program foregrounded First Nations’ dance alongside diverse non-Indigenous performing artists’ responses to place.

At Kalorama, a Welcome to Country by ngurungaeta (senior Elder) of the Wurundjeri people, Murrundindi, was followed by site-specific performances by Djirri Djirri dance group, Dani-Ela Kayler, Gretel Taylor, and Gülsen Özer, and guided by artists of Environmental Performance Authority (EPA) who engaged audience-participants in sensory activities to deepen their experience of the surroundings.

At Burkes Lookout Reserve, a participatory program featured a performance by Dance Arc’s young dancers, an environmental dance workshop by Viv Rogis, a Wurundjeri dance workshop by Djirri Djirri, and a walk with Murrundindi sharing local plant knowledge.

Bookended by Covid-19 lockdowns, the event necessitated hybrid forms, including a self-guided Sensory Walk with prompts for creative interaction designed by EPA with Laki Sideris, and Pedestrian Poetics by Tammy Wong Hulbert and Marnie Badham, that saw whimsical ‘traffic signs’ positioned on trees encouraging passers-by to observe the place with wonder.

Dancing Place: Corhanwarrabul was supported by Yarra Ranges Council and ngurrak barring.