Image: Harmonie Downes
By Thomas E.S. Kelly | Presented by KARUL Projects (Australia)
Pacific Dance Festival 2025 – Aotearoa Return
“My feet walk on land that is red blood soaked. Black burnt, yellow sun drenched country. Stories from thousands of years. Songs eternally kept on the wind and water.”
In Kuramanunya, choreographer and performer Thomas E.S. Kelly (Yugambeh, Minjungbal, and Ni-Vanuatu) offers a powerful solo performance that is part dance, part ceremony, and part reclamation. It is a call to remember those who were led to the cliff’s edge, whose names were never passed down, whose stories were silenced by violence — but whose spirits remain.
This work walks between worlds: past and present, seen and unseen, Country and ocean.
It honours the Old People — First Nations and Pacific ancestors who continue to guide, even when their stories were forcibly cut short.
Moana Ties, Ocean Kinship
Kuramanunya doesn’t just tell one story. It weaves together many strands of genealogy — reaching across the Moana from Australia to Vanuatu and now to Aotearoa. For Thomas E.S. Kelly, who is of both First Nations and Ni-Vanuatu descent, this performance is not only personal — it is ancestral.
It speaks to the deep ties of kinship that connect Indigenous peoples across oceans, through shared values of land, lineage, and spirit. These are the ties that stretch between those who remain and those who have passed — the kind that cannot be broken by colonisation or silence.
In Pacific and First Nations cultures, we do not speak lightly of those who have gone. We speak with reverence, respect, and responsibility. We carry their memory through our actions, our art, and the way we walk in this world.
Kuramanunya is part of this sacred process — a dance of remembrance, a space of ceremony, a moment to stand still and listen.
A Return Rooted in Relationship
This is Thomas E.S. Kelly’s third appearance at the Pacific Dance Festival — and a return that reinforces the Festival’s deep values of relational leadership, inclusion, and continuity across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.
Last year, Thomas and KARUL Projects brought audiences the powerful Weredingo, a shape-shifting, genre-defying piece that blurred the boundaries between human and spirit, animal and identity. Weredingo wasn’t just a performance — it was a journey into the soul, exploring the eternal dance between who we are and who we are becoming.
“Weredingo isn't just a story; it's a journey into the depths of the soul, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the eternal dance between human and beast.”
Both Weredingo and Kuramanunya are part of a larger artistic practice that speaks directly to the values of faiva — storytelling as service, dance as cultural memory, and movement as a tool for reclaiming who we are.
Ceremony in Motion
Through contemporary movement, immersive soundscapes, and striking visuals, Kuramanunya becomes a living ceremony. It honours those who were denied the chance to tell their stories, those whose genealogies were interrupted, and those who still walk with us — unseen, but never forgotten.
This is not a performance to simply watch. It is one to feel, to witness, and to carry forward.
What Audiences Can Expect:
- A solo performance of grief, resistance, and spiritual connection
- First Nations and Moana storytelling through movement and sound
- A space to reflect on the unspoken, the unwritten, and the unforgettable
- A powerful cultural experience rooted in genealogy, memory, and love
Kuramanunya – A Performance to Witness, Not Just Watch
2 SHOWS
- Sunday 8 June at 5:00 PM
- Monday 9 June at 7:00 PM
Te Pou Theatre | West Auckland
Tickets via patronbase
Come with open hearts. Witness with full presence.
Kuramanunya is a story that was never written — but must always be remembered.
Image Credit: Simon Woods
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