On inclusive listening and working cross-culturally

• 13 May 2024

  ‘The conceptual involvement of everyone is an integral part of my work…there are no majority decisions…There are discussions, different thoughts, but the character of an artistic work must be precise, clear’ (Bianchi, in Fraser 2022, p.256-7).
  
  For choreographer Paola Bianchi, rather than inclusive process muddying the final outcome, it hones the work. Bianchi is here speaking about creative teams and artists from different disciplines finding agreement through creative processes and her words are also true of the process I am bringing to Emergenc/y through development workshops, yet I would extend this idea to involving the perspectives of diverse people from minority backgrounds in the team, including First Nations artists.
  
  My decision to cast two First Nations singers in my team of 5 soloists was taken in line with my intersectional feminist approach to making this work, and my determination to implement inclusive practice where possible from the start. The two First Nations practitioners involved in Emergenc/y, Sonya Holowell and Nicole Smede, are highly skilled improvisers, which is a key requirement of my cast, both also read notation, also a fundamental requirement, as well as having voices I am inspired to write for. Although from very different backgrounds culturally and musically, I feel we share a curiosity about music making and an understanding of each others’ sound worlds. These factors had to be true of all my soloists. The fact these two talented women are also First Nations was yet another compelling reason to invite them to develop the work with me. For those of us making Australian work on any theme, I believe it is incumbent on us all to invite a First Nations perspective into our work as this is what the idea of a ‘voice’ is all about. The referendum might have failed, but we can all bring the idea of ‘voice’ into our practice.
  
  British essayist and soprano Juliet Fraser writes that ‘the purpose of collaboration is to explore a new process of making and the hope is the results themselves somehow make a new proposition’ (Fraser 2022, p.257). As I had hoped, but not in ways I had necessarily expected, First Nations participation in Emergenc/y has already shaped its development in many ways.

  Fraser, J. 2022. In the thick of it. Further reflections on the mess and the magic of collaborative partnerships. In: Sounding Fragilities, I. Lehmann & P. Palme (eds.) Wolke Verlag, Hofheim.