Joel Bray
First Collective Residencies Choreographer
About
Living in Naarm (Melbourne), Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri man who danced in Europe with Kolben Dance, FRESCO Dance Company, Roy Assaf and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor, and in Australia with CHUNKY MOVE.
Joel’s intimate dance-theatre encounters in unorthodox spaces spring from his Wiradjuri heritage, and use humour to engage audiences in rituals about sex, history, trauma and healing. His experimental work challenges white audience expectations of Aboriginal performance and blur the colonial genres.
His works Biladurang (2017), Dharawungara (CHUNKY MOVE, 2018), Daddy (Yirramboi Festival 2019), Considerable Sexual License (Yirramboi 2021), I Liked It, BUT (2021) and Garabari (2022) have toured to the Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin, Midsumma, Auckland, LiveWorks and Dance Massive Festivals, and to the Arts Centre Melbourne and Canberra Theatre Centre. Joel’s seven-channel video installation called Giraru Galing Ganhagirri (The Wind Will Bring the Rain) was presented at the National Gallery of Australia, and since toured nationally and internationally.
Joel’s intimate dance-theatre encounters in unorthodox spaces spring from his Wiradjuri heritage, and use humour to engage audiences in rituals about sex, history, trauma and healing. His experimental work challenges white audience expectations of Aboriginal performance and blur the colonial genres.
His works Biladurang (2017), Dharawungara (CHUNKY MOVE, 2018), Daddy (Yirramboi Festival 2019), Considerable Sexual License (Yirramboi 2021), I Liked It, BUT (2021) and Garabari (2022) have toured to the Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin, Midsumma, Auckland, LiveWorks and Dance Massive Festivals, and to the Arts Centre Melbourne and Canberra Theatre Centre. Joel’s seven-channel video installation called Giraru Galing Ganhagirri (The Wind Will Bring the Rain) was presented at the National Gallery of Australia, and since toured nationally and internationally.
Joel was the 2019 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow and this research into Ancient Wiradjuri ceremonial practices continues, in collaboration with Wiradjuri elders, to inform all of Joel’s work. Joel is the inaugural CHUNKY MOVE Choreographer-in-Residence, a member of the Melbourne Fringe Board and was a 2020 Sydney Dance Company New Breed choreographer.
We acknowledge the First Nations people as the Traditional Owners of Meanjin (Brisbane).
Australasian Dance Collective acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their deep connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
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