Video to come: RACHEL PERKINS, DEBRA DANK & DANIEL RILEY IN-CONVERSATION WITH WESLEY ENOCH

Rachel Perkins
Australian film director & television producer

Rachel Perkins is a proud Arrente and Kalkadoon woman, with German and Irish heritage and is one of Australia’s most significant storytellers. She is a writer, director and producer of award-winning television drama, documentaries and feature films, such as; The Australian Wars series, Total Control, Bran Nue Dae, Radiance, Redfern Now, Mabo, Mystery Road, and First Australians. Through her career spanning over 30 years in film and media, Rachel has become an educator, leader, and mentor, inspiring the next generations of First Nations storytellers.

Through her on screen storytelling, Rachel takes us on an essential learning journey of shared histories that we were denied in the classroom. In much of her screen work, Rachel shares our nation’s true shared history through the voices, eyes and stories of our peoples. In 1992, Rachel founded Blackfella Films. A standout achievement for the company was the award-winning 7 part documentary series First Australians. The landmark multi-platform history series, broadcast on SBS Television to over 2.3 million viewers, was accompanied by an internationally acclaimed interactive website. First Australians was awarded Australia’s top honours for documentary including the Australian Film Institute (AFI) and IF Awards, the UN Media Peace Prize, TV Week Logie and Australian Writers and Directors Guild Awards. First Australians has sold throughout the world, and is the highest selling educational title in Australia.  Through truth-telling, we are given the opportunity to acknowledge and grieve for countless crimes committed in the name of colonisation and assimilation.

X: @rachelperkinsau

dr debra dank
author & uniSA enterprise fellow

Dr Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory. Debra is an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia after 40 years working in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles, across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and the Northern Territory in urban and remote contexts.

She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous awards in 2023, including four NSW Premier’s awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Passionate about the environment, her Country, on the Beetaloo Basin, is under threat of being fracked.  

Daniel Riley 
Artistic Director, Australian Dance Theatre 

Daniel Riley, a Wiradjuri man from Western NSW, is the current Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre (ADT). He is the sixth Artistic Director in the company’s 59-year history, and the first Blak artist to hold the position. Riley currently sits on the inaugural Creative Australia First Nations Board and the Board of Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute. He is an Honorary Fellow through the Faculty of Fine Arts (Dance) at the University of Melbourne and previously served as an Associate on the Board of A New Approach (ANA), Australia’s leading cultural think tank.

Riley began his contemporary dance journey at QL2 (previously Quantum Leap), ACT, and since graduating from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2006 has danced for Leigh Warren & Dancers (2005–06); New Movement Collective, UK (2014); Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Ireland (2014); Chunky Move (2019); Bangarra Dance Theatre (2007-2028) and Australian Dance Theatre (2022–23).

Under his directorship at Australian Dance Theatre, Riley has worked on various initiatives to support the next generation of First Nations dancers, choreographers and artists. Chief among these is the multi-award winning BLAK FUTURES. Delivered by ADT in collaboration with BlakDance and Adelaide Festival. Through a rigorous consultation process, BLAK FUTURES developed a set of National and local priorities designed to plant the seeds for the future of Blak Artistry in the dance sector.

Other arts organisations Riley has worked for are ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, as Associate Producer (2019–20) and Creative Associate (2020–21), and Moogahlin Performing Arts as a mentor (2021). He was a Board Director for Chunky Move from 2019 to 2021. In 2020 he was appointed as a Lecturer in Contemporary Dance at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, where he launched and led Kummarge, a self-determined mentoring program for First Nations dance students.

Riley’s choreographic credits include Australian Dance Theatre: The Third (2022), SAVAGE (2022), Tracker (2023, in partnership with ILBIJERRI Theatre Company), THE HUM (2023, in collaboration with The Australian Ballet), Marrow (2024), A Quiet Language (2025); Victorian College of the Arts: WAX (2021), RISE (2020); Louisville Ballet, USA: Tonal (2020), Sacred Shifts (2015); Melbourne International Arts Festival: Tanderrum (2019); Dancenorth: Communal Table (2019); Bangarra Dance Theatre: Dark Emu (2018), Miyagan (2016), BLAK (2013), Riley (2010); Sydney Dance Company: Reign (2015); Third Row Dance Company, UK (2014); QL2 Dance: Hit the Floor Together (2013, 2018); QUT: Twelve Ascensions (2013), Thirteen Ascensions (Twelve Ascension Rework) (2018).

His film credits as Director and Choreographer include: mulunma – Inside Within (2021) for RISING: Melbourne & Yirramboi, and ACT V (2021) for The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque Digital 2021. As a performer, they include Dan Sultan’s Under Your Skin and Stephen Page’s Spear (Bangarra Dance Theatre), in which he worked as Director’s Attachment.

Riley has been nominated at the Australian Dance Awards (2010, 2013) and for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Deadly Awards (2010, 2012 and 2013). He is highly sought after and experienced in conducting masterclasses, facilitating workshops and teaching professional company classes for a range of organisations, educational institutions and dance companies across Australia and around the world.

PROFESSOR wesley enoch am
writer & director

Professor Wesley Enoch AM has written and directed iconic Indigenous productions The 7 Stages Of Grieving, Black Medea and The Story Of The Miracles At Cookie’s Table. He has directed productions of The Sapphires, Black Diggers, I Am Eora, The Man From Mukinupin, Yibiyung, Parramatta Girls, Black Cockatoo and Appropriate. He was the Artistic Director of the Sydney Festival from 2017 to 2020 and was previously the Artistic Director at Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts and the Ilbijerri Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative. Wesley’s other residencies include Resident Director at Sydney Theatre Company; Associate Artistic Director at Belvoir Street Theatre; the 2002 Australia Council Cite Internationale des Arts Residency in Paris and the Australia Council Artistic Director for the Australian Delegation to the 2008 Festival of Pacific Arts. He was creative consultant, segment director and indigenous consultant for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Wesley is currently serving as the QUT Indigenous Chair of Creative Industries.