Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water An Afternoon of Music and Dance

Sohrab Kolahdooz is a Sydney-based percussionist, multidisciplinary artist, and cultural practitioner whose work explores rhythm as ritual, storytelling, and intercultural dialogue. With over 20 years of professional experience, his practice is grounded in Iranian percussion traditions and expands across diverse rhythmic languages from the Middle East, Africa, India, East Asia, and Latin America, which he reinterprets through contemporary and collaborative performance making.

Having performed on more than 300 stages internationally, Sohrab has collaborated with renowned artists and presented work across major venues, festivals, and cultural institutions in Australia and abroad. His performances often sit at the intersection of traditional practice and contemporary experimentation, drawing on ancestral forms, improvisation, and cross-cultural exchange.

Alongside his artistic practice, Sohrab holds a Bachelor of Music and brings extensive experience in music education, workshop facilitation, and arts leadership. He has designed and delivered creative learning programs and community arts initiatives for diverse participants across educational, cultural and public settings. With a parallel background in arts management and program leadership, his broader practice is informed by a commitment to creating meaningful artistic experiences that foster belonging, connection and shared cultural understanding.

Photo: Ravyna Jassani

Shervin Mirzeinali identifies as an Iranian-Australian composer, director, and community-driven artist. His work is deeply rooted in my cultural heritage while exploring new forms of musical expression that bridge traditions, identities, and contemporary sound worlds. He completed his Doctorate in Composition with a focus on spectralism and Iranian Dastgah, and much of his creative research continues to explore how these traditions can be reimagined through a contemporary lens. 

He is especially drawn to rituals—how they hold meaning, memory, and transformation. He likes to dive into them, unpack their layers, and rework them into shared creative experiences. This interest flows through both his solo and collaborative work, from composing award-winning pieces like Panbe Zan, to curating and directing cross-cultural projects. In 2023, he co-founded the Iranian Music Festival in Sydney, which has become a platform for celebrating both traditional and experimental Iranian music. Whether through sound, storytelling, or community engagement, he is interested in how old forms can speak to new contexts, and how creative practice can open space for reflection, connection, and cultural exchange.

Photo: Sasha Shahrabi

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal is a Javanese Australian director, choreographer, writer and Body–Mind Centering® somatic movement educator whose work traverses  contemporary performance, dance theatre and interdisciplinary arts research. Her lineage bridges Australian convict-settler histories with the ceremonial and cosmological lineages of Yogyakarta’s Keraton and the Borobudur temple complex, grounding a practice that moves fluently across cultures, philosophies and embodied knowledge systems.

Internationally trained across the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia, Jade holds a Bachelor of Dance (Miami/NYC), a Master of Choreography (VCA), and completed a Darmasiswa Scholarship at Yogyakarta Arts University. Her rigorously articulated methodology integrates improvisation, somatic embodiment and physical dramaturgy, positioning the body as a site of memory, relation and insight. Working at the nexus of authorship, co-creation and interpretation, she develops intercultural works that are both structurally sophisticated and deeply rooted in lived, sensory intelligence.

Jade has collaborated with leading companies and independent artists including Ria Soemardjo, Kirk Page, Bebe Miller, BodyCartography Project, Mirramu Dance Company, Chunky Move, Bangarra, Legs on the Wall, Hermes Ensemble and Marrugeku. These partnerships embed her practice within expansive networks of experimental and intercultural performance.

A committed contributor to First Nations partnerships, regional arts leadership, youth dance and community-driven initiatives, Jade plays a significant role in shaping contemporary Asian Australian performance discourse. Her work advances a vision of dance and interdisciplinary art that is inclusive, critically engaged and anchored in embodied, cross-cultural knowledge.

Photo: Kate Holmes

Ria Soemardjo is a Naarm-based musician, vocalist and interdisciplinary collaborator recognised for her evocative sound worlds and her sustained commitment to intercultural exchange. Of Australian Javanese heritage, her distinct, haunting vocal style reflects a deep engagement with Balinese and Javanese gamelan traditions, while her broader practice draws on an exploratory approach to voice, ritual and site-responsive composition.

Equally at home in contemporary performance, theatre, community ritual and experimental sound practice, Ria creates, records and performs music across Australia and Asia. She collaborates widely with independent choreographers, directors and musicians. Frequently working with long-term creative partners such as Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal to craft sonic environments that interweave voice, frame drums, gamelan textures and her hand-crafted clay flutes and drums.

Ria’s works often arise through embodied research and sensitivity to place, developing contemporary performance rituals that respond to natural or urban sites. Recent projects include Ngayomi (with Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal), excerpted at Marrugeku’s Contested Lands forum (2023); processional commissions for Chinatown and the Mission to Seafarers; the guided audio walks Murmuring Lake and Swallow Walk; and Of Frogs (Darebin FUSE 2022), featuring her sculptural sound-objects.

A sought-after collaborator across dance, theatre, community arts and interdisciplinary practice, Ria brings a distinctive sonic presence to projects that explore cultural memory, ecological attunement and the poetics of listening. Together with her collaborators, she continues to expand the role of music within contemporary Asian Australian performance ecologies.

Photo: Max Milne