Joel Bray
An artist living on Kulin country (Melbourne), Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri man who trained at NAISDA and WAAPA before pursuing a career in Europe and Israel with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Company CeDeCe , Kolben Dance, Machol Shalem Dance House, Yoram Karmi’s FRESCO Dance Company, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor and Roy Assaf. He returned to Australia to work with CHUNKY MOVE in 2016. Joel’s choreographic practice includes making dance, experimental performance and work for screen.

Joel’s contemporary dance works, Biladurang, Daddy, Considerable Sexual License, I Liked It BUT, Dharawungarra, Garabari and Homo Pentecostus have premiered in Melbourne. Joel’s works have toured to the Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin, Midsumma Festival, Auckland, LiveWorks and Dance Massive Festivals and to Arts Centre Melbourne and Arts House, and have been awarded multiple Greenroom and Melbourne Fringe Awards.

His multi-channel video work, Giraru Galing Ganhagirri (The Wind Bring the Rain), was commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia for Hetti Perkins’ National Indigenous Art Triennial. It has since toured Australia and Berlin.

Joel was the 2019 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow, the 2021-22 CHUNKY MOVE Choreographer-in-Residence and is the 2024-25 Associate Artist of Creative Engine at Geelong Arts Centre.

Director/ Choreographer: Joel Bray
Performers: Zoe Brown-Holten, Samakshi Sidhu, Katherine Hegeman, Nadiyah Akbar, Tamara Bouman (original devising cast member)
Composer: Matthias Schack -Arnott
Set and Costume Design: Jake Preval
Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis
Intimacy Coordinator: Amy Cater
Cultural Support: Tony Briggs
Project Elder: Uncle Christopher Kirkbright
Executive Producer (JBD): Veronica Bolzon
Assistant Producer (JBD): Luke Fryer

In Aboriginal cultures, children often bear one name and are then given another when they are initiated into adulthood. And so this work was born as Gag Order. With my eternal fascination with the intersection of my Wiradjuri and Queer sexual identities, the work begun its life as an exploration of silence and the act of 'gagging', of power and submission through the lens of Queer kink play. In the studio, however, as I began to work with this incredible group of women artists, the work took on a life of its own. We spoke about the power of silence and the act of taking up space. As we danced, we explored geological time and the cadence of Country. We danced together in a declaration of the power of the group. For me it reminded me of those huge rock formations up on my Country, of Kengal Baiame’s dingo and of Walu, the Brother slain in a fight. And so, MONOLITH was initiated. Yet, somehow, a slinky sensuality endures in both the bodies and in the space, and I’m glad for it.