Ballet

Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Patyegarang

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

This year is Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 25th anniversary. For those of you who don’t know, Bangarra Dance Theatre is an Indigenous Australian contemporary dance company that was established – obviously – in 1989. Its artistic director since 1991 has been Stephen Page. His brother, David Page, does the music. These are two very talented brothers who have had their hands in many significant indigenous arts endeavours besides Bangarra, but today it’s Bangarra I want to talk about! Bangarra is apparently a Wiradjuri word for “to make fire”.

Mr Gums and I have been to many Bangarra shows over the years. They are exciting. We love the way they incorporate indigenous themes and movements into the contemporary dance world. Last year’s show was Blak, which comprised three parts – a men’s story, a women’s story, and then both genders together. It was clever and entertaining. In 2012, we saw Terrain, which was inspired by the changing landscape of Lake Eyre in central Australia.

Two performances we’ve seen, though, have been inspired by historical figures – and have also connected, coincidentally, with Australian literature. In 2008 it was Mathinna, the indigenous Tasmanian girl who was adopted by Governor and Lady Franklin. Richard Flanagan told her story in his novel Wanting, which I read before blogging.  The other is their current show Patyegarang about the young indigenous woman who befriended and trusted first fleet astronomer-timekeeper, Lieutenant Dawes. She trusted him so much that she shared her culture with him, including her people’s language, which Dawes recorded in his diaries. Their story is told in Kate Grenville’s The lieutenant, which I reviewed a couple of years ago.

Stephen Page explains in the program why he chose this story for their 25th anniversary show:

I wanted to take the opportunity to pay homage to the land on which we have gathered and created dance theatre works since 1989 – the Eora nation; the place we call Sydney.

[…]

I believe Patyegarang was a young woman of fierce and endearing audacity, and a ‘chosen one’, to speak, within her clan and community. Her tremendous display of trust in Dawes resulted in a gift of cultural knowledge back to her people almost 200 years later …

What he means here is that Dawes’ diaries, which were “rediscovered” by a researcher in the 1970s, have helped current people recover language and culture that had been lost.

Dramaturg Alana Valentine talks of how she translated Page’s vision into a story. She also quotes Richard Green, an elder and cultural adviser for the project, who said that “Dawes was different, he listened”. Valentine continues:

It is an observation that carries invaluable wisdom for how contemporary Australia might continue to honour the contribution Dawes himself made to reconciliation and respect.

There it is again – the message we keep hearing: Listen!

Musician David Page talks of working closely with his brother, nutting out just who Patyegarang was. He said the biggest question for him was “How close was their relationship?”

So, the show. It runs for 70 minutes without interval. My, how hard those dancers worked. As you would expect, it took their relationship from their meeting through getting to learn to trust each other and share their knowledge to when Dawes departs. The scene opens on the beach with the warm glow of dawn. It’s idyllic. The people go about their business, safe, as they usually do. Then a strange man appears and the story progresses. There’s hunting and gathering, smoking ceremonies, the gradual acceptance of Dawes (danced by the non-indigenous Thomas Greenfield) led by Patyegarang (Jasmin Shepherd) while others are less sure – and of course there’s fighting with the red coats. It’s a work that requires concentration and imagination from the audience – and I’m not sure we understood all the references. I suspect this is because while there seemed to be a clear narrative, the program is framed a little more abstractly, focussing on feelings, spirit, values and politics rather than narrative. It’s a work that would benefit from multiple viewings.

The dancing draws closely from traditional moves – at least from those I, as a non-indigenous person, recognise – but is still contemporary. Much of it is low to the ground, earthy, suggesting connection to country. All this is accompanied by lighting that tracks the day and mood; a simple backdrop of cliffs, which at times gave the impression of the ancestors looking on, and a single large rock representing a place of safety, of meeting; and gorgeous costuming that blends with the earth while suggesting lightness and spirit too. There’s one dance by the women – “Maugri (Generic Fish)” – in which tubular costumes enable them to slip from human to sea-creature and back again in fluid, organic moves. The music is dramatic, evocative – including clapping sticks at times, strains of “Botany Bay” at others, and overlays of the language Patyegarang shared and Dawes documented.

Works like this are inspiring on multiple levels, emotionally, intellectually and politically … it would be wonderful if more Australians could (or would) see it.

We unfold – or do we?

/ Whispering Gums / 4 Comments

It’s been a while since I reviewed something other than books and writing here, but tonight Mr Gums and I went to the Sydney Dance Company’s performance of We unfold, and so it’s time I thought for another performing arts review.

We Unfold, photo by Tim Richardson

We unfold (Image: Tim Richardson, via twitpic, http://twitpic.com/9up5t )

The choreographer – and artistic director of the company – Rafaela Bonachela describes his creation as follows:

I wanted to create a piece about our needs and desires to slowly unfold, revealing ourselves to those around us … we unfold is collective discovery, a self-examination of our emotional cores. [Program]

The work uses 14 (or so) dancers, and incorporates music by Ezio Bosso, video art by Daniel Askill and costume design by Jordan Askill.

The dancing was beautiful. It was fluid but also had a feet-planted-firmly-on-the-ground muscularity, resulting in a performance that had both strength and beauty. The music was powerful, but perhaps a little too insistent at times. There wasn’t a lot of dynamic range – it seemed either strong and loud, or stronger and louder. The video art, on the other hand, was quite mesmerising, making it sometimes hard to know where to look – at the dancers or the video behind them. The costuming was effectively minimal for a dance about “emotional cores”, with neutral colours and, for the women, light barely-there diaphanous shifts/tops/dresses (take your pick).

So, what was it all about? The video art suggested a range of things. At times I thought I was seeing a progression of the elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. At other times I thought I was seeing evolution, or at least its commencement in the Big Bang Theory. Then again, there was also a suggestion of Adam and Eve in two sequences, one featuring a man rising from a crouching position, and the other featuring a woman who was, at the end of the sequence, suspended in mid-air. Perhaps it was all of these? Perhaps it was about all these basic things that make us who we are.

In the program notes, Bonachela said that the work was developed collectively with the dancers by encouraging them to improvise during the creation process. He wanted them to explore their willingness to open up, or not, to each other and said that this resulted in different connections and relationships being developed. There was certainly that. I enjoyed, for example, seeing gender roles played with. Not only did men lift women, but men lifted men, women lifted women, and women lifted men. Dancers moved fluidly from solo to duet, trio and larger groupings – and they did it surely.  Overall, it was a very “ground-based” piece, earthy rather than light and airy. In fact some moves were reminiscent of something primeval (which made me think evolution) but neither these nor anything else seemed to turn into any sort of “narrative”, even in an abstract sense. In other words, the unfolding connections weren’t particularly obvious to us. By the end, we felt like we’d watched a sequence of beautiful, well-executed and very watchable moves, but something that was a bit repetitious or, as Mr Gums so succinctly put it, somewhat one-dimensional.

This is the first time we have seen the company since Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon (artistic director and associate director) left in 2007 after 30 years with the company. We unfold didn’t grab us quite the same way as previous performances (such as Boxes, Tivoli, Grand, The Director’s Cut) have – but the dancing was excellent, as we’ve come to expect, so we’ll be back.