In Illume, Bangarra Dance Theatre’s new 2025 commission, light is not just metaphor – it is message. Frances Rings, choreographer and co-CEO, created this work alongside First Nations visual artist Darrell Sibosado, in a first-time collaboration that illuminates more than just the stage. Together with the dancers of Bangarra, plus award-winning lighting designer Damien Cooper, set designer Charles Davis and Elizabeth Gadsby's costumes, they turn light into language: both spiritual threshold and modern pollutant.
For First Nations cultures, light is ancestral. Stars are both archive and cultural compass. Illume taps into the lineage, while also interrogating how the intrusion of artificial light becomes a searing metaphor for violence – land, sky and spirit have been colonised not only physically but atmospherically. This tension pulses through the choreography. The movement vocabulary flows with grounded fluidity, each phrase a negotiation between the anchor of tradition and siren song of modernity.
But perhaps the most immediate sign of change is where the company is performing. For the first time in 20 years, Bangarra has moved out of the 500-seat Drama Theatre into the grander Joan Sutherland Theatre – a space typically reserved for ballet classics and large-scale opera. The upgrade from an intimate corner to centre stage isn’t just logistical. It’s symbolic.
The move shouts a powerful message: First Nations stories belong on the largest stages. It challenges the old, often racialised spatial hierarchies in the arts where Eurocentric artforms take precedence in major venues while Indigenous works are tucked away in ‘niche’ or ‘experimental’ corners. Cue Patrick Swayze preening down the aisle to outrage the old guard conservatives: Nobody puts Bangarra in the corner.
But the question remains – is bigger always better? Not necessarily. Bangarra’s strength has always been its ability to envelop the audience in its earthed, layered, culturally rich worlds. The intimacy of the Drama Theatre allowed for this sensory immersion. One example being that Bangarra performances almost always involve a smoking ceremony; in the drama theatre you can actually smell it. Can the same emotional proximity be achieved in the cavernous Joan Sutherland Theatre, three times the size? So far, it seems not quite.
Then again, this isn’t just about architecture. It’s about artistic equity. Bangarra moving to the Joan Sutherland isn’t just a shift in venue – it’s a reclamation of space. And Illume, with its interplay of visual art, dance and environmental critique, is exactly the kind of multidimensional work that, in theory, could command such a stage. In practice – through no fault of the dancers, who remain fluid, rooted and mesmerising – the work falls short of its vast potential.
Illume echoes some of themes from last year’s Kulka but lacks the emotional resonance, leaning too heavily on props and visual spectacle. Like Kulka, Illume layers its storytelling with high-gloss visual elements. The quirky Pac-Man-esque video projections (Craig Wilkinson) and Elizabeth Gadsby's evening wear costumes – thigh-high slits, off the shoulder mesh – inject a stylised futurism. It’s all very high tech and glamorous, but beneath the polish lies a central tension: how does Bangarra keep its feet and heart in country while dancing into the future? In theory, Co-creator Sibosado understands this battleground, stating “This is what has been passed down to me to continue and take where it’s going. It’s an ever-changing thing... It’s about taking these traditional practices and traditional languages into the contemporary space and trying to make people realise that it doesn’t belong way back 1000 years ago, it belongs here, because I’m here now, and it is me.”
Normally, Bangarra’s music is one of its spiritual pillars. Another sign the work doesn’t fully hit the mark is Illume’s score, composed by long time Bangarra collaborator Brendan Boney. While technically refined, it doesn’t achieve the gravitas of earlier works, lacking the usual layers and rhythmic urgency, drifting more into ambient atmospherics than ancestral soundscapes – except during the liturgical scene exploring the church’s role in the dispossession of indigenous culture, which is haunting and powerful. This musical dilution sits at odds with Bangarra’s usual emotional core.
Illume doesn’t reach the emotional depths of Bangarra’s most memorable works, feeling more spectacle than spirit. Yet, its ambition is undeniable. By stepping onto the Joan Sutherland stage, Bangarra is reclaiming its rightful space. Illume asks a vital question for contemporary Indigenous art: how do we honour what grounds us while imaging what’s next? The answers in Illume may not be perfect, but they’re burning with promise.
