Bhenji Ra: Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon

Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon is the latest moving image work from Australian-Filipina artist, Bhenji Ra.

Featuring an original score by Tati au Miel, the film documents the transfer of ancestral, intergenerational knowledge between Ra and her teacher and collaborator Sitti Airia Sangkula Askalani Obeso. A Tausug elder, Obeso is a cultural bearer of the pangalay, a pre-Islamic dance form characterised by slow and graceful movements that is indigenous to the Tausug and Bajau peoples who live in the Sulu archipelago and in Sabah in the Philippines.

As Obeso instructs Ra on the history of the pangalay, together they develop languages of movement that connect a trans lineage within the dance, revealing a complex, shifting interaction between them and the roles of student and teacher, mother and daughter, grandchild and grandmother. The film delicately interweaves the joint ritual of the pangalay with the tale of a radiant, winged celestial being known across the Sulu as the Biraddali (‘angel’ or ‘skymaiden’ in Tausug). Through fragments of dialogue and dream-like sequences, the Biraddali – played by Ra – is revealed to be a trans, non-human entity and the originator of the pangalay.