NGURRAGABU to Premiere at Sydney Festival Dance Reflections

Dance theatre company Marrugeku has announced the world premiere of Ngurragabu [from the last night/next/tomorrow] presented at Sydney Festival as part of the internationally renowned Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels programme – from 21-23 January 2027, at Carriageworks, on Gadigal Country/Sydney.

As the only Australian company in the programme, Marrugeku brings its distinctive choreographic vision to Dance Reflections, joining some of the world's leading dance companies in a major city-wide festival making its Australian debut. Celebrating the power and diversity of dance, the programme showcases bold, boundary-pushing work.

Australia's leading intercultural and trans-Indigenous dance theatre company, Marrugeku is globally recognised for its distinctive artistic vision and exceptional calibre of work incorporating theatre, multimedia installations and diverse forms of dance.

For over 30 years, Marrugeku has forged powerful, interdisciplinary works that speak across Indigenous and settler communities and respond to local and global contexts. Based in Rubibi/Broome, Western Australia, and Carriageworks Sydney, the company forges new choreoaesthetics through anti-colonial investigations exploring the complex realities of contemporary Indigenous life and the power of intercultural expression.

A great human howl against the damage wrought on the Earth, Ngurragabu is an evocative new work imagining a haunting future of great middens, toxic waters and transformed landscapes. Rooted in the deep time of north-west Australian land and sea Country, and the millennia of movement and relocation of maritime Peoples across the region, Marrugeku imagines a future beyond climate collapse, and embodies possibilities of relocation and radical adaptation.

Developed in dialogue with Yawuru and Bardi custodians, the work connects Country and communities across northern Australia, Oceania and South-East Asia, asking what survival might cost – and what futures remain possible.

Led by Marrugeku Co-Artistic Directors Dalisa Pigram, choreographer, and Rachael Swain, director, Ngurragabu draws on their signature fusion of fierce and moving physicality and political imagination. Their performances play a vital role in raising international awareness of the diversity of Indigenous experience, and though their hallmark intercultural collaborations, advancing shared responsibilities for truth-telling and the possibilities of Makarrata.

Ngurragabu brings together an extraordinary ensemble of Indigenous and settler-diasporic collaborators and performers from Australia, South-East Asia and Melanesia, including Zachary Lopez, Gusta Mara, Stanley Nalo, Jada Narkle, Darci O'Rourke, Taj Pigram, Bhenji Ra, Syarifuddin Sahari, and Zee Zunnur

Marrugeku's Ngurragabu in development Sydney, Dec 2025, photo by Prudence Upton Weaving physical and spiritual realms, audiences are immersed in a radically transformed landscape that asks us to reconsider our relationships with Country and with the planet.

Rewilding the future, a monumental petrified mangrove forest, created by acclaimed visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah draws inspiration from imagined past-future archipelagos connecting northern Australia with eastern Indonesia. The installation is informed by collaborations with Yawuru and Bardi custodians and futurist predictions by landscape architects Realm Studios.

Pushing the boundaries of sustainable stage design, Ngurragabu presents Australia's first 100% recycled and recyclable set – bringing together computational design, circular research with Arch_Manu and 3D-printing innovations by Composite Studio.

While immersive projections drawn from LiDAR scans of Bardi Country and a techno-futurist soundscape create movement and further entwine bodies, landscape and image.

Ngurragabu is commissioned by Sydney Festival, Perth Festival, City of Melbourne through Arts House and YIRRAMBOI.