You’d think that being positioned in one of the country’s most colourful and multicultural locations, material and inspiration would be plentiful for a dance choreographer. It hasn’t always been so easy for Darwin-based pacific island artist Julia Gray, as she tells me via Skype. The director of pacific island group Sunameke sits down to chat about how vibes around the sharing of cultures has changed on her turf over the past few years, as well as how the performance group has developed as a result.

Formed in Adelaide in 1997, Sunameke has undergone various changes, in both style and dancer line up. Having performed internationally and nationally in different show capacities, the group has always maintained the same mission statement: to create work reflective of their cultural diversity within a contemporary and modern environment.

These days, Gray has been undertaking trips to Tahiti to study under the best at the Conservatoire Artistique de la Polynénise Française and bringing both material and the mentality for performance that accompanies it, back to Darwin.

“I can’t create any of my work unless I have a strong traditional grounding of whatever I’m using from that dance style. The PNG stuff, we were brought up with it. But I’ve always been attracted to ‘Ori Tahiti’ or Tahitian dancing and, you know, it’s the same with Samoa and all of those things, you have to go to the places, find out what the people are like. That will tell you why they move the way they move.”  

For Gray, observing the way in which the Tahitians have thrown open their doors in an unprecedented move, to let foreigners in to learn their movement, has only encouraged her to do the same with Sunameke and the way the group operates.

“Going to Tahiti and encouraging other people from other cultures to join us, that’s a direct result of that because, at the Conservatoire, they’re opened it up to foreigners and the Conservatoire has never opened up to foreigners, it’s always been for Tahitians and that’s it. But the fact that the Tahitians were able to open their stuff up, their most prestigious school, to Japanese, Chinese, whatever…made me think “Why do we have to keep it to ourselves?” But they [Sunameke] want to do it, they have respect for it, so let’s do it.”

In terms of performing in Darwin’s multicultural setting, Gray hasn’t been a stranger to the inescapable level of politics which arise as a result of being involved in a relatively small bunch of community groups, as there is up north. Where there are mentalities of being fiercely loyal to your own group, Gray has gone in the opposite direction and opened her classes up to the public, regardless of what nationality the students are from.

“It’s really interesting because it’s done two things. One is that we’ve got a mixture of people that I never thought would come to class. We’ve got full blown ockers, you know! But they work so hard and they’re committed and they’re in there. What it’s done is it’s actually weeded out the pacific islanders who are like “I’m a pacific islander, I can dance, I don’t need to do class. I don’t have to train”. The level of our dancing has just rocketed, compared to where we were. Six, seven years ago, we would’ve looked the right way, we would’ve looked right for being a pacific group but now, our dancing is right but our look is multicultural. That’s more important to me.”

So where before Gray and the Sunameke collective were focused on creating productions to be featured in the annual Darwin Festival and other tours, it seems that they’ve become more class-driven, with an emphasis on education and development. This isn’t to say that the creative director is completely off the production train, rather has found the financial support aspect to be more challenging.

“I want to, but we live in Australia and it’s just so hard to find funding. It’s even harder than it was before. You’ve got your own festival in Darwin and they still won’t return calls, acknowledge or meet. It’s just too difficult. We’ve moved into a more business side of thing, hence the calendar. I mean, we need to get money to get our kids over to Tahiti, because this school has decided to give our kids a workshop, which is unheard of. Australians don’t understand what that means because they don’t have something so prestigious that you can’t get in, and to actually get your foot in the door, they don’t understand.”

The calendar Gray refers to is Sunameke’s latest fundraising project, a 2012 calendar showcasing Darwin’s ‘Pasifika’. Pulling in their contacts from different cultural groups including the Chung Wah Society, the calendar displays what the group is all about.

“It is a bit of a culmination. When we started Sunameke, it was only for pacific islanders, as in pacific island heritage. So last year, I opened our classes to the general public and you know how Darwin is so multicultural, we got lots of people from different cultural backgrounds. So the calendar is about the fact that you don’t have to be a pacific islander to be able to connect with the pacific.”

Along with the sale of this calendar and the continuation of classes and shows in 2012, Gray will be returning to the Conservatoire to partake in more classes. An arduous journey, both mentally and physically, Gray assures me that it can be one of the best experiences a dancer in her field can have.

“It’s such a personal, confrontational thing that you could possibly do. One week in front of the best of Tahiti, the teachers, and then you get judged at the end in your exam by the best. I’ll be Level Five when I go back in April  and it gets harder because they expect you to bring it every time, you can’t go backwards. They become more judgemental and they’re harder on you and they push you and prod you! It’s totally worth it.”

For more information about Sunameke, visit www.sunameke.com.

To check out the “Darwin’s Pasifika” calendar, visit www.darwinspasifika.com.