It’s Karaoke night, Broome style, where country meets hip hop meets Japanese love song. A lone cowboy blows into town, stirring its ghosts for a long and wild night, as past and present dance it out on the street.

Marrugeku launched the national tour of its explosive yet haunting dance theatre work, Burning Daylight from its origins, the West Australian town of Broome in October 2009.

This spectacular high energy production incorporates old and new forms to conjure an image of today’s Broome – the traces of its past as wild frontier town still real, but also mythologised in glossy tourist brochures. Like the rest of the world, a place where young people live out complex identities spanning traditional cultures and global street culture.

Burning Daylight’s Director, Rachael Swain, was inspired by the depiction of Broome at the turn of the 19th to 20th century as an “Asian Wild West”. The production features “karaoke noodle western videos” by Warwick Thornton, the award winning Director of Samson and Delilah, music by MC Dazastah of Perth based hip hop crew Downsyde, and performances by actor Trevor Jamieson of Ngapartji Ngapartji and Sermsah Bin Saad or Suri, a recent finalist in So You Think You Can Dance.

Forging exciting new ground in contemporary indigenous and intercultural dance theatre in Australia, Burning Daylight was choreographed by Belgian based West African Serge Aime Coulibalay (former member of Les Ballets C de la B) working with Broome-based indigenous choreographer Dalisa Pigram.

Marrugeku’s previous works, Mimi (Perth Festival 1996, Dreaming Festival 1997) and Crying Baby (Perth, Sydney and Darwin Festivals 2000-02) were acclaimed by audiences around the country and internationally.

Marrugeku