A few days after South Sudanese refugee David Nyuol Vincent arrived in Melbourne, an Indigenous man greeted him on Brunswick Street and welcomed him to Australia. Nyuol Vincent remembers being shocked as he considered Australia “a white man’s land”. Here was someone with more in common with him than he could have imagined.
It’s this incident that drives Team of Life, the latest work from Melbourne dance theatre company Kage. The show is partly inspired by Nyuol Vincent’s 2012 book The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die, the often shocking story of a child soldier as comfortable with a machine gun as a soccer ball.
Nyuol Vincent and his father fled the drought and devastation of war-torn South Sudan, only to be separated in Ethiopia. The young boy was recruited and trained as a child soldier, before fleeing to a Kenyan refugee camp where he lived for the next 17 years. In 2004 he was offered a humanitarian visa and subsequently resettled in Melbourne.
For Kate Denborough, artistic director of Kage, this story was a way into exploring some of the issues around refugees in Australia through contemporary dance. She was also keen to collaborate with her brother David Denborough, a writer and community practitioner at Adelaide’s Dulwich Centre, who had developed a “team of life” methodology as a way to help survivors deal with traumatic events by using sports metaphors.
Nyuol’s story runs alongside the narrative of a young Indigenous couple Martin and Susie, eagerly awaiting the arrival of their first child. Distanced from their community, the couple construct a “team of life” for their unborn baby that includes Cathy Freeman, Charlie Perkins and Eddie and Bonita Mabo, while trying to heal their own past wounds.
Kage’s show has been in development for two years, purposely drawing performers from a range of backgrounds, with varying success. Nyoul Vincent plays a version of himself as the refugee Daubi, actor Heath Bergersen (Rabbit Proof Fence) plays Martin, and television commentator Leila Gurruwiwi plays his expectant wife Susie.
Dancers Timothy Ohl and Gabrielle Nankivell perform alongside emerging talents Nyuol Bol, Pier Akec and a stand-out Kiki Kuol. There’s an appearance by Indigenous elder Aunty Barbara Wingard and awarded AFL footballer Chad Wingard, while singer-songwriter Kutcha Edwards is an additional, affecting presence.
The production has some sparkling moments. Seeing Nyuol’s pursuit of survival translated into Ohl’s sports-training-as-dance is a reminder of the different purpose that physical strength serves in first and third world countries. Similarly, Martin and Susie’s unflagging optimism about their child’s future despite their evident hardship is heartwarming.
Marg Howell’s cleverly designed set juxtaposes an anonymous football pitch, illuminated by stadium lights and the headlights of three onstage cars, with Susie and Martin’s small caravan world, both homes of sorts for those looking for belonging beyond the quarter-acre block.
And when the two worlds come together on that great unifying day of AFL grand final to perform a contemporary version of Advance Australia Fair, as reimagined by Judith Durham and Kutcha Edwards and led here by Edwards, it’s spine-tingling.
However, something about Vincent’s story is lost when refracted through sport and then again through dance. Similarly, Martin’s everyman tale isn’t grounded in enough specificity to invite a connection. While the dance sequences aptly explore the beauty, strength and precision of football, they don’t gel with the caravan narrative. Still, while there may be one too many layers, Team of Life is an ambitious and hopeful exploration of very real issues in a theatrical context.
• Team of Life runs at Malthouse theatre, Melbourne until 20 October
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