A dancer from Umina Beach led a performance at a Sydney festival this month to help celebrate the stories of First People.
Shana O’Brien performed at the biennial Yellamundie Festival on Friday, January 22, at Eveleigh’s Carriageworks centre.
O’Brien’s piece, ‘Waterholes’, explored the emotion of connecting to ancestors and the potential that water presents for healing.
The dancer said she feels incredibly grateful for the opportunity to perform at the festival.
“It’s my first time choreographing a piece – it’s really exciting,” O’Brien said.
“I have a mentor and dancer to work with … there’s support and guidance there for me to make that transition from [dance] into choreography.
“It’s been a process – I got led to this place by something else, that something else that resides in your belly.”
O’Brien said she is proud to have lived and grown on Darkinjung land and credited her decision to start painting in the COVID-19 lockdown as inspiration for the dance piece.
“I didn’t have access to dance spaces [so] I started painting waterholes and it feels like creating this piece is a continuation of that journey and research,” O’Brien said.
“During this process, my team and I went to the waterholes and spent the day there, seeing the beautiful way the trees curve, the landscapes – that’s all going to influence the work and the movement of the performance.”
As a dancer and graduate of NAISDA Dance College, O’Brien has worked with a variety of choreographers and participated in cultural residencies on Moa Island in the Torres Strait Islands and Nyinyikay in North East Arnhem land.
She said she hopes to push the performance even further in future.
“Hopefully this is a first development of this work and I want to continue working on it, getting it bigger and making it into a full-length production,” O’Brien added.
“I’d like it to have more of a life.”
Four performances from six First Peoples storytellers were shown at the event – the only festival in Australia to identify and present new First Peoples stories for stage.
Each work underwent two weeks of development workshops, before being presented to audiences over the three-day event.
With the title of the Yellamundie Festival deriving from a Darug word meaning “storyteller”, the project was supported by Create NSW, Australia Council for the Arts, City of Sydney and the Office for the Arts.
Maisy Rae