Considerable Sexual License

A massive disco ball hangs high, smoke and roving lights reminiscent of an eighties niteclub, set the scene. This is a modern corroboree where people meet, dance and fuck. Considerable Sexual License is the new immersive work by multidisciplinary performer Joel Bray, presented by Darebin Speakeasy in association with the biennial Yirramboi First Nations arts and cultural Festival currently on in Melbourne.

Bray along with his three rambunctious cohorts - Carly Shepard, Daniel Newell and Niharina Senapati - enchant and lead the audience around the circle of “earthly delights”. It is also a place where story is told via dance, theatre, spoken word and physical movement.

Bray’s diligent research is evident, exploring his ancestral lascivious roots in ceremony and dance. He resumes his extensive study on anthropologist RH Mathews (an anthropologist embedded in the Wiradjurri people), much like in his early work in Dharawungara. The circle space is sophisticated and architectural in structure, mirroring the ceremonial rites of his Aboriginal ancestry. He is continually shedding and poking fun at his white Christian upbringing while proudly providing an intersecting space of Indigenous heritage and queer sexual identity.

The colonial accounts addressing class divisions and Aboriginal persecution - reimagined  metaphorically through spoken word, movement and theatre - are both engaging and provocative. A major feature of the night is the unicorn (bigger than a life size horse) symbolic of fantastical and wild times; performers are happily gyrating and playfully fornicating on the mythical beast.

Set design (Nathan Burmeister) is elaborate, grandiose and vibrant - it complements the dynamic and fluid lighting design (Kate Sfetkidis) along with the energetic, bombastic and mood enhancing sound design (Daniel Nixon).

Bray is an engaging innovative performer - his new work is visually dynamic, ostentatious and   bursting with fresh and scintillating energy and ideas.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Bryony Jackson