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A kaleidoscopic ritual of multilingual poetry, original music, folk songs, dance and shadow puppetry.
The Resonant Heart (TRH) is a collective that creates autonomous, authentic spaces for CALD and BIPOC women and female identifying artists to share their creative voices with wider Australian audiences.
The lineup includes devotional Indian vocalist and sitarist Sarita McHarg, Iranian musician Vahideh Eisaei, and theatre maker Elnaz Sheshgelani who explores Persian dramatic storytelling Naghal and shadow puppetry, South Sudanese poet Lizzy Kuoth and the Balkan/Sephardic Jewish Trio SARAY Iluminado that includes multi-instrumentalists Irine Vela and Kelly Dowall with vocalist Nela Trifkovic, who initiated the project with her colleagues from the trio in 2020.
These artists have united to co-create from their collective and individual embodied cultural and artistic knowledge. Together they developed a ritualistic interdisciplinary work The Heart Whispers and Whirls – a mesmerising kaleidoscope of multi-lingual poetry, original compositions, folk songs, movement and shadow puppetry.
The Heart Whispers and Whirls includes original instrumental and vocal music and traditional Bosnian, Sephardic Jewish, Indian and Iranian songs, as well as, stories and poems in Nuer, Hindi, Bosnian, Farsi, Serbian and Ladino languages. Often described as a “ritualistic feast of ancient ways of knowing” this work celebrates creative sisterhoods and connections to matrilineal ancestry through songs, stories and dances of togetherness.