Rachel Swain

Biography

Rachael Swain is an Angelo-Pākehā director, dramaturg and performance researcher. She was born on the lands of the Ngāi Tahu, Aotearoa and lives and works between the lands of the Gadigal (Sydney) and of the Yawuru (Broome, WA). After initially training in ‘the theatre of movement and gesture’ of Jacques Lecoq, she became a co-devising  performer and later a director with Stalker Theatre (1989-2014), combining performance art, new circus, dance theatre and video art. In 1994 Rachael co-founded Marrugeku with Kunwinjku painter T. Yulidjirri & Gamilaroi choreographer M. Leslie. Since 2007 she has been Co-Artistic Director of Marrugeku with Yawuru/ Bardi movement artist Dalisa Pigram. Together they co-conceive and create Marrugeku’s award winning intercultural dance theatre works in collaboration with diverse Indigenous and settler artists. Her directing credits include Mimi (1996), Blood Vessel (1999), Crying Baby (2001), Incognita (2003), Burning Daylight (2006), Shanghai Lady Killer (2010), Cut the Sky (2015), Jurrungu Ngan-ga (2022) and The Demon (2022). She also co-directed Buru (2010) and Ngalimpa (2018) with Pigram. She has provided concept development and dramaturgy for eight Indigenous and intercultural performance works. The productions have received 19 national and 9 international commissions and have been presented by over 155 top tier festivals and venues worldwide.

Rachael trained in postmodern improvisational techniques at the European Dance Development Centre, Arnhem, NL (1995), studied theatre and dance research at Das Arts, Amsterdam, NL (1999-2001) and post graduate film and video production at UTS Sydney (2001-2002). Throughout her directing career Rachael has worked in tandem as an independent and industry based performance researcher and scholar. She gained a Doctorate in Theatre Studies from Melbourne University (2010) winning the Phillip Parsons Prize for Excellence in Performance as Research in a PhD. Her DECRA fellowship at Melbourne University (2013-17) was the first in the field of Theatre and Performance and her current Future Fellowship at UNSW is also the first artistic research project in the field. Her long term commitment to positioning intercultural collaborative art making co-created by diverse Indigenous and settler artists as a site of knowledge production for the nation has resulted in 10 industry and community based research laboratories and a range of multi-vocal collaboratively authored publications. These multi-modal projects facilitate capacity for change and growth in the arts industry, in remote Indigenous communities and in intercultural dance and performance theory. She is the author of Dance in Contested Land— new intercultural dramaturgies (Palgrave Macmillian, 2020) and co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural performance (Performance Research, 2021). Together with Pigram she was awarded the inaugural Peta Tait Prize for ‘Excellence in Creative Projects and Scholarship Achievement over time’ (ADSA, 2020) and won the 2022 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for Outstanding achievement in the performing arts and potential contribution to Australian society into the future. Their multi-awarded production Jurrungu Ngan-ga was the first Australian dance work presented by Venice Biennale and was awarded Outstanding Work on Critical Race Performance Studies by Performance Studies International 2023.

Photograph credit: Jalaru Michael Torres