Sydney Festival Digital Archive

Garabari by Joel Bray (2026)

Choreographer Joel Bray’s Garabari (the Wuradjuri word for corroborree) began as a ceremony and ended in something close to euphoria. Staged on the Northern Broadwalk of the Sydney Opera House, this ancient form of First Nations storytelling dissolved the boundary between performer and audience with disarming ease.

As the story of the creation of the Murrumbidgee River ufolded, there was no hard sell, no coercion: just a gentle invitation to move, to join, to listen, to belong.

The result was exhilarating, with hundreds accepting the invitation to dance, joy catching like fire. Charged with a message of reclamation, refusal and hope, Garabari made the politics of reconciliation feel alive with an act of genuine togetherness.