1. cut
the
skyFive songs for the future
“ Seventy minutes
of mind-blowing
intercultural and
interdisciplinary
performance!”
Carol Flavell Neist , ARTS HUB
In the face of seemingly
inevitable industrialisation
and climate change, is
it possible to dream a
different future together?

2. Concept: Dalisa Pigram and
Rachael Swain
Poems: Edwin Lee Mulligan
Director: Rachael Swain
Choreographers: Dalisa Pigram and
Serge Aimé Coulibaly
Dramaturge: Hildegard de Vuyst
New Media Artists:
SonalJain and Mriganka Madhukaillya
(Desire Machine Collective)
Set and Costume Designer:
Stephen Curtis
Musical director: Mathew Fargher
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Cultural Adviser: Patrick Dodson
Cast and co-creators: :
Ngaire Pigram
Miranda Wheen
Eric Avery
Josh Mu
Edwin Mulligan
Dalisa Pigram
Cut the Sky is commissioned
by Theater Im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen
(DE), Carriageworks (AU), KVS, Brussels
(BE), Les Théâtres de la Ville de
Luxembourg (LU) and Centre Culturel
Tjibaou Nouméa (NC)
CONTACT
Europe & Canada
Gie Baguet
Frans Brood Productions
gie@fransbrood.com
Australia and rest of world
Justin Macdonnell
Marrugeku — International Promotions
bookings@marrugeku.com.au
Marrugeku makes innovative
intercultural dance theatre from the
northwest Australian experience, where
desert meets sea, Australia meets Asia
and where cultures twine, fuse and
morph. Based in Broome in the remote
North West, Marrugeku creates new
forms of dance and theatre exploring the
region’s history and contemporary social
and political context. Works include
Mimi (1996), Crying Baby (2001) and
Burning Daylight (2009) Buru (2011)
and Gudirr Gudirr (2013) and previous
productions have toured to throughout
remote and urban Australia, throughout
Europe and across The Americas, Asia
and The Pacific.
www.marrugeku.com.au
cut the sky
Cut The Sky is a meditation on humanity’s frailty in the
face of our own actions. In a burnt landscape a group
of climate change refugees face yet another extreme
weather event. Propelled back and forward in time, they
revisit conflict with mining companies, the destruction
of fauna and relegation of the marginalised, while
contemplating the gift of a human life and the life giving
force of the sun. Butterflies swarm searching for water,
dancers disintegrate into the light, a song is sung calling
for rain.
Like climate change itself, Cut the Sky is at once
unapologetically local and international, a concept
embedded in the collaboration itself, which includes
artists from Europe, Asia, Africa and remote and urban
Australia. Dance, video, poetry and song collide. All
the elements – popular and high art, literal and
poetic, Indigenous and European- meet abruptly in a
breathtaking 70 minutes, creating electric connections.
A work in five acts based on the poems written and
spoken by Edwin Lee Mulligan, Cut the Sky includes
original songs from soul singer Ngaiire, Indigenous songs
by the cast and covers from Nick Cave, sung live with
thrilling effect by Ngaire Pigram. The set is bare aside
from a gas pipeline thrusting up from the floor of the
stage. Backstage is hung a huge length of fabric, its
folds visible, serving as a screen for projections. The
video design encompasses the literal – broad sweeps
of country, the devastation after a cyclone – and the
poetic. This ambitious multi dimensional work showcases
Marrugeku’s unique contemporary choreography;
restless, taut and unwavering.
Oil protests and climate change drive Marrugeku
into exhilarating new territory ABC ARTS
Five songs for the future