Remapping stories of shared connection through dance

Listening and feeling the sounds of mother earth is at the heart of a dance piece co-choreographers say has the power to heal.

Bunyi Bunyi Bumi presents the remapping of cultural connections across the Asia-Pacific. Credit: MICK RICHARDS HIRES/PR IMAGE

While listening and feeling the sounds of the earth is at the heart of the dance piece Bunyi Bunyi Bumi, its "beautiful gift" is the remapping of cultural connections across the Asia-Pacific.

Co-directors raymond d. blanco and Priya Srinivasan started with the body as the basis for Bunyi Bunyi Bumi, bringing the rhythms of Indonesian Acehnese with those of the Torres Strait Islands.

"I work on vibration, I feel a lot," blanco, a Yadhaigana and Erub man, told AAP.

"For me it's very much about listening to my body and I respond the response of being an artist, being a dancer.

"I can't resist that, because my spirit is actually moving me."

The performance, presented by BlakDance explores resilience, identity and transformation in the face of colonisation.

At the heart of the work, Srinivasan says, is how "listening to the Earth Mother" has the power to heal, indeed she says, this is what Bunyi Bunyi Bumi means.

"To heal and nurture and be gentle with each other in a world that is increasingly violent and patriarchal and colonial and imperialist and capitalist," she said.

"This is for us the heart of the work, that the journey of our every day labour takes us away from these connections we have."

While blanco says it is this connection to the earth, which is so needed in a modern society.

"We need to get our hands and feet in the dirt and remember who we are and where we come from because we get so lost in the cities that throw so much at us that we just don't know where we are," he said.

Bunyi Bunyi Bumi explores resilience, identity and transformation in the face of colonisation. Credit: MICK RICHARDS HIRES/PR IMAGE

An exploration of the ancestral connections and shared kinships, spanning across the Indian Ocean are also a feature of the performance.

"We're re-mapping and reimagining what the past was and what the future can be if Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous agency is at the heart of these engagements with the region, and not a white colonial settler model of rapacious desire and destruction of land, of people, of language and culture," Srinivasan said.

"That's the most beautiful gift we've given each other, reimagining these relationships."

Buny Bunyi Bumi will be performed at Bunjil Place in Melbourne from Thursday until Saturday

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