It’s the Block in Redfern and outside the Community Centre
about 12 kids aged eight to 15 are going aerial with harnesses, ropes and silk
loops, swinging and swaying and climbing high.

Upstairs, inside the centre, more young people practise
modelling, walking to the beat, and posing. The girls tend towards hip thrusts
and flicks, while the boys lean back with arms folded, hip-hop style. Next
door, a 15-strong choir rehearses Christine Anu’s My Island Home, slow and
plaintive, with massed voices and an acoustic guitar.

These are some of the preparations for Gathering Ground, a
site-specific collaboration between PACT and the Redfern Community Centre,
where about 40 young Aboriginal people from the Block and its environs work
with established artists and physical theatre companies such as ERTH and Legs
On The Wall.

Gathering Ground is a performance event exploring the power
of community, friendship and love. Developed and performed by young people
living in and around the Block, it continues on from the successful 2006 event,
which was focused on history, ceremony and protest. Audiences are led through
various specific sites, before gathering for the finale in the park outside the
Community Centre.

When asked why she’s doing it, Louise Winters, 13, says it’s
fun.

“It’s freaky at the start because everyone knows you
and stuff, because it’s just like your family and friends give you confidence
for doing stuff that you want to do,” she says. “It makes you feel a
lot better.”

Willurei Kirkbright is a young artist who participated in
the first Gathering Ground in 2006. She is back for this event, making two
installations – one on the wall of an abandoned terrace, the other in the
soon-to-re-open Murraweena preschool.

“I’m basically doing it for the kids, giving them and
this community a voice,” Kirkbright says. “We have some really
creative and really talented kids. We want to show all the positive things
about Redfern – we have a really strong sense of family here; we have a strong
sense of community – and to show that this isn’t all a negative place and it’s
a real important part of our society and our culture.”

For co-directors Karen Therese and Frederick Copperwaite and
the producer and the centre’s cultural development officer Lily Shearer, the
process of Gathering Ground is much more important than the result.

“It’s to develop not only theatre skills and physical
skills for these kids but it’s about giving them skills of commitment, seeing
things through, starting things and finishing them,” Shearer says.
“If they find a little niche there, that’s a bonus, and if they can
develop that outside, that’s an extra bonus.”

Several participants from the previous Gathering Ground have
gone on to get scholarships or TV work.

“Young people don’t have much of a voice in our society
in general, let alone in the Aboriginal community,” Shearer says.
“Gathering Ground is about them being proud of who they are and where they
come from and it’s about them saying, and they’ll tell you straight out, they
don’t want the junkies on the Block. They don’t want the alcoholics on the
Block. It’s about changing lifestyle.”

It’s also about changing perceptions of one of Sydney’s most derided and
stereotyped communities. Copperwaite says the Block will be adorned with
theatrical lighting and signs for Gathering Ground but the area won’t be
dressed up or “disguised”.

“It’s really important that [people] see the state of
the buildings and, when they walk around the streets, that they see the
environment as it is.”

Therese says everyone is welcome at the event’s three free
showings and the public will be led through the event by tour guides.

“Last time it clearly said on the poster that you had to
meet opposite Redfern train station,” Therese says. “And I walked up
and it was 7.30pm and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s no one here.’ Then I looked
across the road and there’s all these white people looking scared on the other
side, crowding Redfern Station and looking at me. And I’m like, ‘Over here
guys! It’s OK!'”

Shearer says: “You have to come and see the show to get
the messages because you’ll hear it in the lyrics that the kids have written
for the songs. You’ll see it in their bodies, the way they perform, the
proudness. You’ll see it in the parents and the grandparents. Don’t believe in
stereotypes in the media. Come down and see it for yourselves!”

GATHERING GROUND

Thursday and May 30-31, audiences meet opposite Redfern
Station at 7.30pm, free, bookings associate@pact.net.au.

Photo: It’s time to celebrate … Kiarna Dungay (with peace
sign) and Candace Trindall beside her.

Source:
www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/hip-to-be-square/2008/05/22/1211182959571.html