Weatherlands for Sky & Bones

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Keywords:

breath, weather, movement

Abstract

This two-breathed essay emerges from the convergence of Indigenous and settler practices of knowing, feeling, and moving. Written from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Naarm (Melbourne), Weatherlands for Sky & Bones draws from a cross-cultural, transdisciplinary collaboration in performance philosophy. As an experimental mode for thinking through performance, we explore a praxis of weatherlands.  Addressing the weather as curator, custodian, and community practitioner, sky bones and corporeal-cosmological infrastructures reimagine choreography beyond the colonizing gaze of Western science.  Resisting the idea of an empty sky,  weatherlands attune to the cultural, spiritual, and ancestral stories that animate skies and bodies.

 

 

 

 

Author Biographies

Carol Brown

Carol Brown is a choreographer and dance scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent choreographies include Saltines for Sealion Women (Wild Dunedin Festival 2025), Opera for the Dead (AsiaTopa 2025), Tensegrity (Melbourne, 2022), LungSong (EcoWest, 2019), and The Living Archive of Breath  (Colour Festival 2019). Carol's research interests lie in choreographic collaboration and site responsive performance. She is Professor of Choreography at the University of Melbourne.

Tia Reihana-Morunga

Tia Reihana-Morunga is a senior lecturer in Dance Studies in Creative Arts and Industries and a Co-director of the newly established Centre for Co-Created Ageing Research (CREATE-AGE) at The Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. Her research in the arts and education sectors focuses on culturally responsive praxis reflective of indigenous knowledge systems. As an Indigenous artist, Kaupapa Māori research practitioner, and community facilitator, Tia works extensively in Arts, Education, and Health with Mana Oceania communities in Aotearoa and the wider Pacific. 

 

References

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Published

08-10-2026

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