The Ocean Between Us is a cross-cultural movement theatre work created by Indian artist Diya Naidu and Australian artist Nadia Milford. Rooted in contemporary dance and writing, the piece explores the body as a vessel for communication, connection, and care. At its heart, the project asks: Who are we beyond the social categories we carry? How can we bridge the “ocean” of binaries that divide us—across race, gender, economics, and the many identities we inhabit?

 

The work uses the metaphor of the Indian Ocean—an expanse that separates the collaborators’ countries—to explore how what divides us can also connect us. Two women meet at the intersection of dancing and writing, the personal and the political, the forest and the city. The performance unfolds through spoken and unspoken language, poetry and movement, inviting audiences into a space of deep listening and reflection.

 

Drawing on an embodied writing practice, the text engages with the power dynamics of a Global North–South collaboration, the complexity of forming friendship across inequality, and the emotional labour of navigating discomfort, disagreement, and our own biases. With humour and honesty, the artists ask: Can we resist the urge to “other” one another? Can movement and poetry soften conflict and open new ways of being together?

 

The piece is shaped through an intersectional feminist lens and influenced by ancestral wisdom, eco-somatic intelligence, and teachings from the forest, ocean, and non-human life. The Ocean Between Us is ultimately a search for rest, resonance, and relationship in a fragmented world. It proposes that the dancing body can be of service—an instrument of connection, care, and co-creation in a world that urgently needs it.