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Detour artists
Bella Waru
Bella Waru is a Birraranga / Melbourne-based creative of Ngāti Tukorehe, Te Ati Awa (Māori) & European descent. Working primarily with movement & sound, Waru performs ~dance, song, poetry~, creates and facilitates ritual and community arts as a medium for ignition / resurgence / connection / activation / clearing / healing. Their work rises from the body as a vessel of personal, ancestral and environmental knowledge, inheritance and connection.
Detour activities
Dance Dance Intifada Jams
Across two open dance jams, Feras Shaheen invited Boorloo’s dance community to train, cypher and consider how music and movement have helped marginalised communities resist social, political and artistic constraints. Grounded in street dance, the sessions brought physical exchange and urgent conversation together, asking how collective dancing might become a conscious form of solidarity and change.
Progressive Except For ____________
At The Blue Room Theatre, Feras joined Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa, Kylie Bracknell and Sisonke Msimang for an open panel examining political pressure, censorship and the treatment of Palestine within the Australian arts sector. The conversation questioned the sector’s claims to progressiveness and considered what these contradictions meant for Indigenous and marginalised communities locally and globally.
An Introduction to Palestinian Dabke
Feras led an accessible introduction to Dabke, a folk dance from Bilad al-Sham that is practiced at celebrations and carries a powerful history as a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Open to all ages and experience levels, the workshop shared the foundations of the dance alongside its music, cultural context and history.
Detour was delivered in partnership by Dance Makers Collective, Dancenorth, GUTS, Tasdance, Tracks and STRUT Dance.
Detour was assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.