On a warm March evening in Chennai, the busy stretch of Tower Park in Anna Nagar is set to transform into something far more intimate and almost sacred. Guuranda x KMMC is not the kind of performance one simply sits back and watches. It asks you to step in, listen closely, and become part of a story that has travelled across oceans. Rooted in the creation stories of the Narungga people of south Australia, this work carries with it the weight of land, memory, and belonging.
Jacob Boehme, an award-winning theatre maker and choreographer, is the artistic director for Guuranda x KMMC, which is presented in collaboration with KM Music Conservatory and the Greater Chennai Corporation. Talking about the uniqueness of the performance, Jacob says, “I use a process called Memory in Movement, a methodology I’ve been developing for 18 years.
I work with the memories and lived experiences of the dancers themselves to create choreography and movement. The memories are aligned to themes in our Creation Stories (stories which sometimes give us moral lessons about pride and ego, land and responsibility). So, the dancers end up dancing each other's memories on stage.”
In this performance, spectators become participants. “My concern is not over authorship or control, but about care and inclusion. By inviting you into our culture and our stories, we begin a dialogue about friendship and understanding. We fullfil our cultural obligations to keep our culture strong and alive,” he adds. The performance will also feature shadow puppetry by B Muthuchandran’s Tholpaavai Koothu Group.
“We have had amazing discoveries about language in this exchange. We share a lot of language similar to Tamil. For instance, in one of our songs about our ancient Lore man, Nhandu, we sing about Nhandhu wandidja (kangaroo sleeping), but we found that in Tamil it sounds like “the crab is coming”. It’s quite extraordinary,” he shares excitedly.
Shreya Nagarajan Singh from Shreya Nagarajan Singh Arts Development Consultancy feels that the collaboration with KM Music Conservatory emerged quite organically. “What drew me to Guuranda was its inherent generosity as a work.
It doesn’t position itself as something to be consumed, but something to be entered, experienced, and shaped collectively. Chennai, as a city, has a deeply embodied relationship with music and performance, but much of it still sits within proscenium or sabha frameworks. I was interested in what happens when we gently disrupt that expectation,” she states.
When we ask about how they would balance accessibility with artistic depth while performing in a public space, she believes that the balance lies in framing. “We don’t overexplain, but we create enough context, through design, facilitation, and spatial cues, so that people can locate themselves within the experience. Depth then unfolds through participation, not instruction,” adds Shreya.
This piece situates itself within conversations around identity, land, and community. “Guuranda for us is all about our relationship to land, which is also about how we identify ourselves to each other culturally. In this exchange, we are all in a process of discovery, rediscovery and revelation about our own identities, our relationship to each other and how our lands were once sisters, thousands of years ago,” Jacob notes.
According to Shreya, Chennai audiences share a strong culture of engagement. “What is less familiar is the format, not the instinct. Since we at SNS have also produced Mixtura Vizha, which is a public arts festival, for the past five years, we know the appetite for these kinds of performances,” she shares.
Guuranda x KMMC will take place on March 22 at Tower Park, Anna Nagar, from 6 pm to 8 pm.