“Hope and light,” is what co-choreographer Deborah Brown wants audiences to take from Bangarra Dance Theatre’s world premiere of Horizon. “I think we’re going through some darks days and I’m inspired to create and collaborate on a piece that can share the beauty of the places we’re drawing inspiration from.”
Brown is one of three First Nations choreographers showcased in this double bill. The first performance is Kulka, meaning blood, by Torres Strait choreographer Sani Townson. The second, The Light Inside, is Bangarra’s pioneering main stage cross-cultural collaboration, between Brown and Māori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson.
Both Brown and Patterson are understandably fascinated with ancestry. Brown’s mother is from Thursday Island, in the Torres Strait. She speaks of the Torres Strait as a thoroughfare of star navigators and seafarers, “spiritual luggers”, a place of cultural collaboration and intersection, whose threads and webs spread out in terms of DNA.
The Light Inside focuses on matriarchal lineage, and the love carried inside from individual and collective motherhood. Patterson speaks of his two daughters: “What we can give them as artists is a story; we can give them a foundation; we can give them a place to stand. That’s the legacy of projects like this, of connections like this. How can we build a vision for not only the current dance community, the current Bangarra family, but future possibilities, sharing cross-cultural stories, not just within Australasia, but how can that expand globally to create a global vision of connectivity. That’s the grander vision here – a grand and beautiful vision.”
But first, Kulka. It’s a minor revelation: a pacy, 20-minute, kaleidoscopic joy-ride that’s like a cross between a 1980s ‘Stranger Things’ arcade game and a Martha Graham fever dream. The costumes are a mix of black mesh unitards, with rivers of sequins – think Graham’s Ritual to the Sun, if it were set in a Berlin nightclub this century – alternating with glorious powder-blue and gold split-thigh gowns, designed by visual artist and fashion designer Clair Parker.
The set consists of a mirror covering the entire back wall of the stage, the top of which is angled towards the audience, creating a second performance surface – kaleidoscopic perspectives, illuminating what would otherwise be blind spots. Video designer David Bergman embraces floor and mirror to great effect, projecting animation onto both: blue lines eat across the ground like Pac-man; dancers ride the back of a crocodile god; spar with animated martial artists; and cavort in oceans of colour, like paint spilled across the floor. The movement is light-footed, angular, agile, and powerful, making full use of lifts and diagonals. Kulka ends in a celestial bath, a galaxy of stars splashed across the stage – where we come from and where we are going.
After interval is the feature piece: The Light Inside. Elizabeth Gadsby designed the set for both bills in Horizon, and the second shifts to a mountainous rockface, at turns slick and volcanic. Combined with Karen Norris’ extraordinary, hazy, ethereal, ‘Fingers of God’ lighting, the audience is submerged to the bottom of Lake Taupō, New Zealand, where Patterson spent his childhood.
One of the many things that makes Bangarra performances so unique and mesmerising is the music, which immerses the audience in a spiritual sound bath. Long time Bangarra collaborator Steve Francis composed the score, in conjunction with Brendan Boney. It’s an exhilarating and emotive mix of choral blends, electric guitar, didgeridoo, percussion, vocals, and nature soundscapes (wind, birds, ocean, rain).
Likewise, the costumes are bespoke Bangarra (by Jennifer Irwin, another one with a Bangarra history spanning decades). Irwin’s costumes connect the stars, the land, and the sea – featuring feathers, flowing gauze skirts, glitter, ochre, aqueous blues and greens, textured wings and dusty pinks, oranges, reflecting the earth and sunset.
I am always struck by the presence, gaze, and integrity of Bangarra dancers – they are truth-tellers and advocates for their cultural stories, where every movement has purpose, energy and meaning, from long, levered limbs to the tiniest of head tilt.
Lillian Banks is a magnetic, utterly present, articulate dancer. Her solo ‘Blue Star’ is breathtaking, set to the soundscape of rain, against the slick, glistening rockface – closely followed by the captivating duet of Daniel Mateo and Janaya Lamb. The ensemble scenes are equally as powerful – the Bangarra men, in particular, are charismatic and striking – with dancers swallowing the space in cyclonic motion, being catapulted into the air and finally coming to rest under the sound of the ocean waves.
Horizon is bold, transcendent, visceral, divine and poignant. It’s a tribute to the power and beauty of the sea, earth, stars, our immutable connection to all three, and the irrepressible resilience of the light inside us. Bangarra, as a company, is a cultural gift and Horizon beats like a collective heart. It is not to be missed.
