THE HONOURING

A  full length Dance Theatre Production that unpacks suicide & grief within the First Nations community.

‘The Honouring’ is a dance-theatre production with puppetry, projection and physical storytelling. It explores suicide, death, and psycho-spiritual grief within the First Nations community. It beckons a revival of healing ceremonies by diving deep into stories hidden within. Jackie’s longing to be resuscitated from the living dead leads them through spaces between physical, emotional, & Ancestral paradigms to discover resurrection and love. 

Jackie Sheppard has created this piece as a response to their own lived experience with suicide in the absence of Sorry Business ceremony to help guide their grieving and healing process. This creation of Jackie’s has been developed with an intention to speak to Indigenous peoples capacity for discovering healing and the embodiment love & joy while existing within violent colonial landscapes. Through unfolding layers of grief and sorrow, Jackie reveals love letters, discoveries of tenderness and an inner ability to self-soothe while dancing in the shadows. They explore where emotional wounds can become places of courage, attempting to alchemise their shame into their power - though these lesson don’t come easy.

‘The Honouring’ had its world season premiere at Yirramboi Festival 2019 @ the La Mama Courthouse. Its first iteration, a visceral and truthful depiction of the anguish and hopelessness that eventuates when suicide becomes a constant in close proximity. Jackie pulled no punches, unapologetically sharing their experience as an Aboriginal person traversing complex trauma. ‘The Honouring’ received incredible responses from the community, and strong reviews. 5 years later, its evolution reflects Jackie’s personal and professional growth, self-development, and their momentous life transitions. Their persistence to experience healing shines through in the piece, daring the idea that maybe they just might discover love amidst a rigid and unfair world of disenfranchisement. Hope underpins the new iteration, offering a dynamic depiction of grief. 

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“★★★★…a multilayered, frequently elusive, eerily familiar, remarkable rendering of the existential nature of life itself.” – Jennifer Barry, Artshub

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“★★★★…The work inhabits a personal reckoning with the destruction of Aboriginal people and cultures, wrought by colonialism, by the successive waves of migrants who came to this land uninvited. It pulls no punches on the spiritual implications of that continuing history, challenging all to reflect upon it.” – Cameron Woodhead, The Age

“I watch as on stage Sheppard tucks his people in to dream without ceremony, dance or song. What else is there to do but sit quietly with him and begin to speak back from the dead?” – Julia Hurst, University of Melbourne

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- Image Credit: James Henry