Powerful new First Peoples’ dance coming to Art House

Preparing Ground, a powerful new First Peoples’ dance work, is coming to The Art House Wyong on May 16.

The first dance work to grace The Art House stage in 2025, Preparing Ground is an all-female First Nations-led dance work that brings together community, climate, and culture.

Through movement and compelling imagery, it explores relationships with Country, each other, and the future — offering a call to community, grounded in hope.

Co-directed by Marilyn Miller, Jasmin Sheppard, and Katina Olsen – with support from BlakDance, QPAC, Brisbane Festival, NAISDA Dance College and The Art House – the work was developed over six years through collaboration with the performers’ communities on their Countries.

A slow, deliberate process grounded in cultural time and collective decision-making, Preparing Ground invites audiences to consider what it means to belong to a land that remembers, while simultaneously acting as a call to join First Peoples’ care of land as an urgent act for our shared future.

Exploring themes of community, colonisation, language, and land care, the contemporary work weaves intricate choreography, vivid projections of Country, and a dynamic, transformative set in a feat of First People’s storytelling and ingenuity that beckons us all to come together in care for the land and each other.

In a time of environmental and social upheaval, Preparing Ground offers a message of hope, resilience, and collective responsibility.

Preparing Ground opens at The Art House at 8pm on Friday, May 16 and continues The Art House’s longstanding tradition of bringing First Nation’s art and culture to the Central Coast.

Tickets are on sale now.