Stories are the light, the light within
Horizon
Bangarra Dance Theatre
Thursday 29th August, 2024
Playhouse, Arts Centre, Melbourne / Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country
Choreographers: Deborah Brown, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson and the Dancers of Bangarra Dance Theatre (The Light Inside), Sani Townson (Kulka)
Composers: Steve Francis (The Light Inside), Brendon Boney (The Light Inside), Amy Flannery (Kulka)
Set Designer: Elizabeth Gadsby (The Light Inside & Kulka)
Costume Designers: Jennifer Irwin (The Light Inside), Clair Parker (Kulka)
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris (The Light Inside & Kulka)
Associate Set Designer: Shana O’Brien (The Light Inside & Kulka)
Video Designer: David Bergman (Kulka)
Associate Video Designer: Cameron Smith (Kulka)
Rehearsal Director: Juliette Barton
Featured Music Performer: James Webster (The Light Inside)
Filmed Dancer: Phil Walford (Kulka)
Kalaw Kawaw Ya Language Consultant: Leonora Adidi (Kulka)
Featured Vocalist: Zipporah Corser-Anu (Kulka)BANGARRA DANCERS: Lillian Banks, Bradley Smith, Courtney Radford, Kallum Goolagong, Kassidy Waters, Jye Uren, Kiarn Doyle, Maddison Paluch, Daniel Mateo, Emily Flannery, Janaya Lamb, Chantelle Lee Lockhart, James Boyd, Amberlilly Gordon, Lucy May, Donta Whitham
New Horizons, my response to Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Horizon, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
Before digital audio, compact discs, cassette tapes with their ribbons of sound sandwiched within a small case, and pressed vinyl records, came wax cylinders to record and reproduce sound, thanks to Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the hand-cranked phonograph. As sound waves cause the diaphragm to vibrate, the wriggling needle draws a line across the surface of a rotating, hollow cylinder of wax. The needle, literally, cutting a groove in the transference of sound wave to physical recording.
As Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Daniel Mateo lies centre stage, in the opening solo, Cylinder, of The Light Inside, he becomes a breathtaking recipient cylinder, gently rolling, recording, encased, as “ancient and sacred stories passed through generations, [with] voices so powerful, they reach beyond the horizon” draw lines across his form. The past reverberates “beneath the blanket of scratches and clicks”[i], as the recorded songs from the Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection[ii] make of him a vessel. Each cylinder holds two-minutes of sound, but like all things, such measurements belie the universe they truly contain. The same, too, could be said of Mateo’s delicately unfurling solo.
Emily Flannery, Maddison Paluch, and Courtney Radford in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s The Light Inside, Act 1, Horizon, photographed by Daniel Boud
Trace lines reach the core in Deborah Brown’s Gur/Adabad/Salt Water, from of The Light Inside, presented in Act 2 of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Horizon. As Mateo rises from the floor, I feel a sense of what this might feel like, but I cannot truly know. The mechanical, fragility of the wax cylinder throws into sharp relief Western notions of how and why sound is captured, recorded, and shared, and it cannot come close to how story, songline, connection is within every indivisible part of the Knowledge Systems of First Nations Peoples, where “the connection to the spirit realm and the way that informs sustainable living, the connection to place and the way that informs identity and relationships, and the connection to people and the way that informs shifting socio-political constructs”[iii] is bonded and expansive. Stories are the light, the light within.
Blown in on a forecast night of damaging wind gusts, Horizon, having previously begun its tour on Gadigal Country at the Sydney Opera House, Ngunnawal Country at the Canberra Theatre Centre, Meanjin at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, is currently on Wurundjeri Country, at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne. For opening night, following community night, Brown’s Salt Water to Moss Te Ururangi Patterson’s Wai Māori/Fresh Water collaboration is Bangarra Dance Theatre’s first mainstage cross-cultural collaboration, spanning the archipelago of the Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait Islands and across the water to the ancestral lands of Ngāti Tüwharetoa in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Cleansed by the winds of the Tawhirimatea, this “reaching out and meeting of two waters”[iv] particularly felt in Fresh Water’s Pure: The Cleansing and Purification of the Soul, featuring the full ensemble. Comprised of each dancers’ hands, closed fists are stacked to momentarily draw horizontal and vertical lines of accent, where earlier, hands open, dorsal-side, a fanned headdress in flux had appeared about the face.
Amberlilly Gordon, Lillian Banks, and Bradley Smith in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s The Light Inside, Act 2, Horizon, photographed by Daniel Boud
In Blue Star, Lillian Banks twinkles bluer, faster, to tell of a storm approaching, and, like Mateo before her, her magnetic solo ensures the warning is heeded. In Sails, Courtney Radford, Maddison Paluch, and Emily Flannery, with their arms extended at an upward angle, are the sails on the horizon[v], part descriptive, part poetic. In costumes by Jennifer Irwin, one, a compass overhead, the other three, with single cascading sleeves, the means to return home safely to land. Behind them, the horizon line, still low, is suggestive of distance, and the depths of the sea. Elizabeth Gadsby’s set design gradually changes throughout Salt Water, with the rocky crop of the horizon line ever being pulled up higher and higher until we reach Fresh Water, the second half of The Light Inside, and what was a ribbon of land viewed in the distance is now a looming rockface, misted. Rocks, wind, water, and message, all held in balance.
Before such a rockface, situated on a volcanic plateau, Makawe Tapu/Sacred Hair sees dancers Flannery, Chantelle Lee Lockhart, and Jye Uren braid their long hair together, literally, in the weaving of knowledge and deepening of strength. Having previously, with their hair still fastened in a high plaited ponytail, each used the plait like a tail or rope with which to pull themselves upward, their loose hair plaited together creates a powerful image, in the story of Maui attempting to tame the sun.
Emily Flannery, Jye Uren, and Chantelle Lee Lockhart in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s The Light Inside, Act 2, Horizon, photographed by Daniel Boud
Horizon opened with an expanded version of Sani Townson’s earlier 2023 work, Kulka, which suspended a large, angled mirror above the stage, and so, too, typified that the horizon line can be between the sea and the sky, the earth and the sky, and the celestial horizon, the sacred realm, beyond reach, but ever offering guidance with the Universe as Mother. As such, Kassidy Waters, Kiarn Doyle, Mateo, Bradley Smith, James Boyd, and Kallum Goolagong are viewed in two realms that appear alike, but at this angle, different. The embodiment of Danalayg (Life), which flows seamlessly into Bloodline, on the stage before me, in the reflected world above, they reveal “the belief we come from the stars”[vi], before slicing their way through the water in Koedalaw Awgadh/Crocodile God, in reference to Townson’s totem. The dark and glistening scales upon their linked bodies, in the mirror, clearly evoking reptilian hallmarks from this new vantage point.
Crossing the Birrarung (Yarra River), on my walk home, the wind whipped the surface water up high, perhaps in a bid to smudge the horizon line, and I thought about the earlier read words of June Oscar AO: “This knowledge is from long ago, listen to our voices.”[vii]
Kassidy Waters and Kiarn Doyle in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Kulka, Horizon, photographed by Daniel Boud
[i] Cylinder synopsis, from the first section, Gur/Adabad/Salt Water, from The Light Inside, choreographed by Deborah Brown, presented in Act 2, Horizon, Bangarra Dance Theatre program, https://www.bangarra.com.au/media/bqpnmziw/bdt-horizons-program-a5-finalweb4.pdf, p. 14.
[ii] The British Library’s Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection (C80) includes 141 wax cylinders recorded in the Torres Strait Islands and British New Guinea as part of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. True Echoes, https://www.true-echoes.com, accessed 29th August, 2024.
[iii] Bangarra Dance Theatre Horizon Study Guide for Teachers and Students, https://www.bangarra.com.au/media/kvydy0cf/bdt-horizon-studyguide.pdf, p. 4
[iv] Shimmering Water synopsis, from the last section, Wai Māori/Fresh Water, from The Light Inside, choreographed by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, presented in Act 2, Horizon, Bangarra Dance Theatre program, https://www.bangarra.com.au/media/iyvblphg/bdt-horizon-program.pdf, p. 15.
[v] In reference to the boats identifiable by their pointed ‘lug’ sails and multiple masts, the Pearling Luggers, used to harvest pearl and trochus shells in the 1890s, during the pre-plastic boom for buttons and buckles.
[vi] Danalayg (Life) synopsis, from Kulka choreographed by Sani Townson, presented in Act 1, Horizon, Bangarra Dance Theatre program, p. 13.
[vii] “Our ancestors that came before, created this knowledge. Our voices carry this knowledge to give to our children to carry forever. They must learn their knowledge so they can stand and speak with strength. So they can follow and know this wisdom. This is our umbilical cord to life. This knowledge is from long ago, listen to our voices.” June Oscar AO, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Human Rights Commissioner, ‘Close the Gap: We nurture our culture for our future, and our culture nurtures us’, March 2020, https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/ctg2020_report_final.pdf, accessed 29th August, 2024, p.4.
Image credit: Lillian Banks in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s The Light Inside, Act 2, Horizon by Daniel Boud
