Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains the name of someone who has passed. The family of Ningali Lawford-Wolf has given the media permission to use her name.
I remember the first time someone spoke to me about the mysterious power of the Kimberleys. I was in a crowded playroom of energetic Aboriginal kids, and asked the twinkly-eyed, snowy-haired Catholic nun babysitting them how she’d become involved in Indigenous welfare. She told me she’d been posted to remote Western Australia as a schoolteacher. “The Kimberleys,” remembered Sister Naomi, and her twinkly gaze turned dreamy. “The land,” she murmured. “It gets in your blood.”
For most of us, the opportunity to walk on Country in Western Australia’s remote and ancient Kimberley region is rare, and rarer still to walk with the Indigenous communities that for millennia have nurtured a deep relationship with the land. This is why Bangarra’s SandSong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert is an astounding gift. Rich in history and spirit, its songs and dances are intimately connected to the region’s individual family lines. You leave the performance knowing you’ve witnessed something deeply powerful and intimate.
SandSong was the brainchild of Bangarra and their long-term collaborator, the acclaimed late actress Ningali Lawford-Wolf, a Wangkatjungka desert woman born in the Kimberleys. Her death in 2019 came only three weeks after she’d met with artistic director Stephen Page to discuss their long-held dream of a dance about the region. But the result, Bangarra’s first original full-length work in three years, is an astounding tribute. Her siblings Eva Nargoodah and Putuparri Tom Lawford took on her role of Cultural Consultant, and the traditional dances they passed on to the company dancers are seamlessly framed by Stephen Page and Frances Rings’s original choreography.
The dancing, like many of Bangarra’s works, is in vignette form and strengthens the audience impression of witnessing. Act 1 is makurra, the Walmajarri word for “cold season”, where we are introduced to the seasons of the Kimberleys through dance evoking the Land’s rhythms. Shapes are flowing and rounded, with an organic movement quality that reminded me of the wind on desert ground. Act 2 is parranga, the hot dry season, with ensemble dances hinting at building tension as colonial cattle dust storms break the Land and families. A wonderful part of this act is the Spinifex scene, where the dancers move clasping bunches of spinifex leaves, and the sounds they make brushing against the stage floor fills the theatre with a unique music. Act 3 is kartiya, “white person”, where we witness families forced off the desert and onto cattle stations as forced labour. The choreography and music become fractured, climaxing with the Auction scene where the audience is confronted with the harrowing (and historically accurate) image of Indigenous labourers in neck chains. Station Labour, with the dancers now in black, represents the relentless cycle of hard labour through clever integration of body percussion into the movement. The final vignette, Build Up / Walk Off, ends with aerialist dancers spinning on wires to represent a cyclone brewing as the community asserts its rights. The act ends with an archival recording of the voice of legendary activist Vincent Lingiari AM, reminding his people of the legacy of their fathers and the Land. It is a powerful moment in SandSong, and made my eyes fill with tears. Act 4 is yitilal, the wet season, which closes the performance as a tribute to the resilience, hope, and rebirth of the desert communities. The stage and dancers are cloaked in shimmering gold: a sign of desert sands, life-giving rain, and the enduring strength and living richness of Indigenous identity.
In addition to the dancing, sound is an extraordinary part of SandSong. Composer Steve Francis undertook the enormous labour of love of scouring Bangarra’s archives for recordings of the late Lawford-Wolf singing traditional songs or conversing. Land and story also come alive through Francis’ use of nature soundscapes (birdsong, wind, and rain), traditional speech and song, archival recordings of political speeches, and the vocal assault of a meat-market auction (symbolising commodification of Indigenous forced labour). For a dance so deeply rooted in place and history, sound is immensely important in transporting audience members to the heart of the action, and Francis’ work in this regard is remarkable.
The Bangarra dancers, who made two research trips to the Kimberleys for SandSong at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, are as committed and compelling as ever. Jennifer Irwin’s costumes are vivid and textural, clothing the dancers in striking colours inspired by the desert’s natural beauty. The expanse and light of the Kimberleys, in all its moods, are also wonderfully captured by Jacob Nash and Nick Schlieper’s set and lighting design.
SandSong, from a cultural and artistic point of view, is frankly remarkable and an intimate gift to audiences everywhere. Go see it.
