On National Sorry Day 2016, Murrawarri choreographer and performer Tammi Gissell paid tribute to Australia’s Stolen Generations. Working within the confines of Evidence: Brook Andrew exhibition, Tammi performed a durational movement meditation, based on traditional Aboriginal dance vocabularies, with a focus on cultural memory and healing.
Tammi Gissell was born literally ‘out the Back of Bourke’, Tammi proudly descends from the Murruwarri nation of North-Western New South Wales. She is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, poetess and performance theory scholar holding a Bachelor of Performance: Theory and Practice (Honours) from the University of Western Sydney (UWS); inducted into the Golden Key International Honour Society in 2004; graduating Deans’ Medalist and Reconciliation Scholar in 2005. Her Honours Degree research into sacred gesture and posture upon the formation of body identity made the UWS Deans’ Honour Roll again in 2006. From 2007 to 2011 she was Course Coordinator at NAISDA Dance College. In 2011, she held residency at the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts (ACPA) and was commissioned to write for the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Since then she has completed choreographic commissions for OCHRE Dance Company (Western Australia) and Canberra Dance Theatre for the National Gallery.
Tammi has lectured widely including the University of Newcastle, Queensland University of Technology, the Victorian College of the Arts and has presented research to the World Dance Alliance Global Summit, New York. She was also a panelist at the 2012 BlakDance forum and the 2013 National Dance Forum. In November 2013 she appeared at the 8th annual Tsai Jui-Yueh International Dance Festival, Taiwan and the Kowhiti Symposium of Indigenous Dance, New Zealand.
