MATA MATA
Presented bySTRUT DANCE WA & HARRISON COOK
“MATA MATA is the honouring of Whakapapa and identity and the holder of space to witness the sacred act of awakening this reclamation. As the taniwha stirs just beneath the surface, memory begins to flow from skin into whenua. Awakening the blood memory that is present here. Acknowledging the physical body as a vessel to conjure spirit, mana, and memory.”
Performed at The Blue Room Theatre, Northbridge WA
May 19 – May 30 2026
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Lead Artist
Harrison Cook
Composer / Sound Designer
W. Sze Tsang
Lighting Designer
Matthew Erren
Mentor
Zee Zunnur
Costume Designer
Tia Tokić (BOSA)
Stage Manager
Jake Battle
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Excerpt from Wolfgang von Flügelhorn’s review:
“…Mata Mataexplicitly invokes another aquatic or amphibious reptile, namely the shape-shifting guardian spirit called taniwah that in traditional Maori culture is said to create and inhabit rivers, lakes, oceans and caves, and which resembles the role of ancestral beings in Noongar and other Aboriginal cultures that take the form of giant turtles, lizards, serpents or crocodiles.
Such a creature is powerfully evoked – especially in the first section of the work – by Cook’s slow, deliberate movement and mesmerising hand-sewn costume. The latter is designed and made by Tia Tokić (aka BOSA) – a Boorloo-based fashion graduate from Curtin University, who also created the memorable costumes for Sage J Harlow’s experimental opera O,D,E at The Blue Room last year. The costume for Mata Mata consists of a kind of gathered smock with elongated flipper-like sleeves and a lumpy cloth hood that completely covers Cook’s face and head. Combining aspects of turtle and crocodile, it’s physically ambiguous and emotionally ambivalent, potentially creative, nurturing, protective and destructive.”