Bangarra Dance Theatre is a company of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers. One of Australia’s most prominent performing arts companies, it produces powerfully theatrical works that combine elements of traditional and contemporary dance. Local First Nations communities are included in the creative process and the focus is on their stories.
Yuldea tells the story of the Aṉangu and Nunga people, and of a highly culturally significant place in far western South Australia. Now known mainly by its anglicised name Ooldea, this place was a permanent water source in the past. Choreographer Frances Rings herself is connected to this area. She is a descendant of the Wirangu and Mirning Tribes from the West Coast of South Australia. This is the first full-length work Rings has created for Bangarra since becoming Artistic Director this year. She first joined the company as a dancer 20 years ago, and was Associate Artistic Director from 2019.
Yuldea is divided into four acts, in chronological order of the people’s and Yuldea’s history: Supernova, Kapi (Water), Empire, Ooldea Spirit. The second and third acts are further divided into a total of eight scenes. Yuldea is fast-paced and gripping: the whole work lasts 65 minutes (no interval).
The first two acts and the last contain so many beautiful and evocative moments. Supernova looks back at the creation of the world, and at the death of a star as a foreteller of change. The 16 dancers clump together, form human chains that break apart, and reach to the sky. Large beams of light crisscross the stage like searchlights.
The recorded soundscape and music (by Leon Rodgers) at this point includes loud thrummings and roarings, wind and drumming. Other components throughout the work are ambient sounds, such as the noises of insects and calls of birds, and songs (by the duo Electric Fields). The loud sections are extremely loud.
Kapi Spirit features Lillian Banks and Kallum Goolagong in a mesmerising duet of grounded but flowing movement and controlled lifts. The mood is reverent, honouring the importance of water. The lighting is blue, and the costumes blue-grey shading to pale grey and white. The fluttering and rippling of Banks’ many-layered dress accentuates her fluidity. Jennifer Irwin, longtime costume designer for Bangarra, has again produced wonderful, intricate costumes incorporating many different materials and textures that suit the dancers, the stories and the movement perfectly.
Two groups of Water Diviners, the Birds and the Dingoes, represent the animals that the people observe and follow to find water. The Birds (five female dancers) wear striped skirts and plumes of feathers on their shoulder, and have strikingly painted faces. They flick their heads quickly like birds, and crook their arms to resemble wings. The Dingoes (five male dancers), in ochre-red shorts and knotted string tunics with a long ‘tail’ at the back, dance close to the floor, and scratch the ground. Two circle each other on hands and knees.
Red Mallee celebrates this tree whose roots are a source of water. Kassidy Waters and Daniel Mateo perform a beautiful duet to represent the tree, entering the stage with Waters on Mateo’s shoulders. They stay close together, like the branching trunks of the tree. Their costumes are striking: a dress of bronze strips like curls of bark for Waters, and an orange-bronze long split kilt for Mateo.
Act 3 is a contrast to the other acts. It follows the process of colonisation, the building of the Trans-Australian Railway through traditional lands, the impact of the missions and Christianity, and the devastating effects of nuclear testing at Maralinga. The reverence of the preceding acts is gone, replaced with bewilderment, grief and suffering. Gone, too, is the coherence, structure and order represented in the previous acts, and the sense that everything is in its right place. The dancers depict the construction of the railway and buildings with rails, tracks and timber frameworks. Dust covers the stage and billows up around the dancers after construction has destroyed Yuldea as a water source.
On through Act 3, the costumes change to drab European-style shifts, work clothes and uniforms. The movement is raw but often more regimented. Dancers run forward, apparently trying to escape, but are pulled back. In a recurring motif, people join to form a chain and then break apart. After the railway, the missions and Christianity, comes the black mist – the fallout from the nuclear testing. Victims are carried, others are writhing and covering their eyes. Act 4 revives an optimism and celebrates an enduring culture and spirit, all the dancers taking part.
The set (designed by Elizabeth Gadsby) consists of a backdrop made of multiple, very closely spaced black ropes, with embedded lights. Initially seeming to be one impenetrable surface, their strands are revealed in different ways and colours by different lighting effects (designed by Karen Norris).
High up at first is a white arc, representing a constellation. This moves and changes shape in different parts of the work, descending to near the floor in Kapi Spirit, and forming an arch over the full company in the finale.
Yuldea covers a long history very succinctly in a multisensory work that arouses many emotions. Bangarra is in good hands.
