Nina Levy chats to the winner of 2016 Keir Choreographic Award, Ghenoa Gela.
WHEN I meet dancer and choreographer Ghenoa Gela on a balmy Sydney spring day, she has recently returned from a choreographic lab in Noumea with Broome-based dance theatre company Marrugeku. In spite of a nasty post-travel cold, she is generous with her stories. Bathed in sunlight, I could listen to her yarn, as she puts it, for hours.
Although it’s been some months since Gela won the 2016 Keir Choreographic Award, there is still excitement in her voice as she recounts the experience, not just of winning the competition, but of the competition process itself. “It was amazing and challenging and overwhelming," she exclaims. "We only had 100 hours studio time. I could only get my amazing artistic performers, Elle Evangelista, Melanie Palomares, Melinda Tyquin and Miranda Wheen, in for a short period of time. There was so much reflection for me… ‘How am I going to do this in two weeks?’"
Gela says that mentor Danielle Micich, artistic director of Force Majeure, provided invaluable guidance. “Danielle only came in
two or three times, for no more than an hour at a time, but she would say, ‘what does this mean? What are you trying to say here? How much more interesting can you make this?’ Geez my mind was going overtime!”
The Keir Choreographic Award commissions eight choreographers to create a short work. At the semi-finals, held at Dancehouse in Melbourne this year, four finalists are chosen. In 2016 the finals, where the winner is selected, were held at Sydney’s Carriageworks. “Rosie Fisher [the performance curator] at Carriageworks was such a great facilitator," says Gela. "I could go for her with any kinds of queries and worries… and I had a lot of queries and worries. I’m a pretty competitive person.”
The work that Gela made, Fragments of Malungoka - Women of the Sea (pictured above), explores Gela’s Torres Strait Islander heritage, melding traditional dance with contemporary dance and technology. Interestingly, Gela chose to work with non-Torres Strait Islander dancers to make the work rather than using dancers with prior experience of Torres Strait Islander dance. The reason?
“It’s all about sharing my culture,” explains Gela. “In this industry I feel that people don’t know what Torres Strait Islander dancing looks like. They confuse us as a people with Aboriginal people. So I was trying to make a statement about that. [When I use non-Torres Strait Islander dancers] I like the idea that in the process of teaching them traditional dance
the dancers also learn cultural protocols and a bit of language as well. I chuck in a couple of words here and there. It’s hard to find people who respect that but I was very lucky with these girls. There’s not a lot of access [to Torres Strait Islander culture] in Australia, so slowly, slowly I’m just trying to share.”...
This is an extract from "Spinnng a yarn" - read the rest of the article in the Dec/Jan edition of Dance Australia, OUT NOW! Buy Dance Australia at your favourite magazine retailer or subscribe here, or purchase an online copy via the Dance Australia app.
Top photo: Gregory Lorenzutti.