Review: Cut The Sky, Marrugeku Theatre

Cut The Sky is a dance theatre work by Marrugeku Theatre. It is in interdisciplinary work combining dance, video, poetry and song. Cut The Sky is part of the ‘Performing Climates’ for the Performance Studies International Conference or PSI hosted by Arts House. This year PSI is in Melbourne and it focus is on making conversations and exploring climate change though the lens of performance.

Cut The Sky is an intercultural exploration of how climate change is affecting the earth. It explores what climate change means for the indigenous Australians and its impact on traditional stories and customs, and it also explores what it means to be a ‘climate change refugee’. The structure of this piece is abstract and chaotic - it flings us forward and back in time. It opens with an apocalyptic version of Australia in the future ravaged by climate change and sends us into a cyclone imagined by the dancers wearing makeshift clothes of plastic and storage bags.

Cut The Sky is highly provocative and emotional. It screams and weeps over the earth and how we are damaging it and asks us "What are we going to about it?!". It’s a beautiful, complex exploration over something all Australians should be concerned about.

Marrugeku have toured this work all over the world, performing in outdoor and indoor venues. It has played at the Sydney opera house and remote communities in rural Australia, as well as being shown in multiple venues across Europe.

Cut The Sky is showing at Arts House Meat Market from Wednesday 6th till the 10th of July. It runs for 75 minutes with no internal. It is part of Performing Climates, an arts program designed and curated for the public by Arts House for the 2016 Performance Studies International Conference.

Review written by Ebony Beaton

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