NAISDA’s highly anticipated end-of-year performance season featuring leading First Nations choreographers, dance artists and storytellers, is set to debut at Carriageworks, Sydney from 21-23 November 2024.
Timely, pressing, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, the trees have voices, the feet have ears is a powerful call to arms, a charge to re-evaluate our relationship with nature.
Directed by multi-award-winning choreographer Vicki Van Hout, the performance combines contemporary and cultural dance, film, spoken word and sculptural set design, to deliver NAISDA’s signature First Nations perspective.
Van Hout said, “This year’s production takes up the urgent call. We hear it on the wind as a roaring plea or as a cry from the trees as they catch fire. It’s mirrored in the alarm of emergent generations inheriting a legacy of unchecked consumption and neglect.”
the trees have voices, the feet have ears reminds us of the need to embrace a reciprocal relationship with Country—because, as Van Hout puts it, “Country is starting to fight back.”
Herself a NAISDA alumnus, Vicki Van Hout explained,
“In the Dreaming, all known and unknown things are sentient, interconnected within an animate and overarching entity. Instead of manipulating and mediating everything for human convenience through circuits, motherboards, and virtual clouds, the trees have voices, the feet have ears proposes a reassertion of a dedicated, embodied rapport with Country,”
The production also features guest choreography by acclaimed NAISDA alumni Glory Tuohy-Daniell and Henrietta Baird.
Tuohy-Daniell’s poetic work breaks the buffer between us and the natural world, while interdisciplinary performance-maker Henrietta Baird amplifies the increasing impact and frequency of global extreme weather events.
The production is framed by Cultural Tutor and Songman Dujon Niue, who brings the spirit, songs and dances of Torres Strait Mua Island to the Carriageworks stage.
Performed by NAISDA’s 2024 cohort of emerging dance artists, this production enables Sydney audiences to witness their creative talents before they embark upon careers that will see them performing to audiences nationwide and globally. This extraordinary performance of First Nations creativity, culture, energy, attitude and execution continues NAISDA’s nearly 50-year legacy at the forefront of First Nations performing arts training.
Production Details:
Directed by: Acclaimed Choreographer Vicki Van Hout
Guest Choreography: Henrietta Baird and Glory Tuohy-Daniell
Framed by: Songman and Cultural Tutor Dujon Niue
Performed by: NAISDA’s next generation of First Nations dance artists
Tickets on sale now
Dates: 21–23 November 2024
Venue: Carriageworks, Sydney
For more information, visit: https://naisda.com.au/naisda-news-events/the-trees-have-voices-the-feet-have-ears/