University of Melbourne Victorian College of Arts head of dance Dr Carol Brown was born and raised in South Dunedin, within walking distance of St Clair Beach, and is returning home to pursue her latest dance creation — Saltlines for Sealion Women — as the University of Otago’s 2025 Caroline Plummer dance fellow.
The well-known dancer, choreographer and artistic researcher is looking for up to 30 women of all ages, to rehearse for a public performance on St Clair Beach on April 12, as part of the 2025 Wild Dunedin Festival.
"I've been very inspired by the return of sea lions to Otago and their growing presence around the beaches of Dunedin.
"I am in awe of these beautiful wild mammals coming on to the shores of the city’s beaches, and I’m interested in what that means for us.
"How do we as humans adapt our behaviour to accommodate their presence?
"And how do they also inspire us — their resilience, their return, their survival in a time of climate crisis.
Dr Brown said she had been "really moved" by some of the stories in the ODT about sea lions.
"I think it’s helped us empathise with animals and that feels like a shift in humanity — that we're moving from looking at wild mammals as prey, to looking at them as partners in the survival of the planet.
"How do we move with them in closeness, in proximity, when you might have one coming up alongside you on the beach and you're in the way.
"As a dance artist, part of our work is to look at what moves us, how do we move with the forces of nature, how do they become not just an inspiration but a kind of way that we engage in a kind of co-presence, without getting too close, but also just being inspired."
As a result, her six-month residency project was a community dance work centred on recovery, safety and kinship.
She said the work paid homage to the 1939 recording of Sea Lion Woman, sung by the African American Shipp Sisters, of Missouri, and the project was underscored by the image of salt lines as "the thread that links the ebb and flow of the tide" with the monitoring of changes in sea levels.
"There's another side-narrative of this. There's often been storytelling of mythological women becoming seals, like the Selkies of Celtic and Norse culture.
"So there's a kind of cultural heritage aspect of it — this ongoing fascination with the relationship between women's bodies and sea lions and women on the edge of the sea and what that represents and the danger, the precarity of that, but also the empowerment of that."
While the project was an opportunity for women to unleash their inner sea lion, she said human morphology was very different from sea lions.
"The way sea lions move, they're strong, they arch, they fold, they have that flexibility.
"The way they move in the water is very different from how they move on the sand.
"So we might be able to unleash movement patterns inspired by the sea lions, but we're not interested in imitating them."
Those interested in participating can send an expression of interest to carol@carolbrowndances.com by February 28.
Workshops will take place twice a week between March 10 and April 11.
