Flora
The Australian Ballet
Joan Sutherland Theatre
Sydney Opera House
Tuesday, 7th April 2026
Ballet audiences are accustomed to dances about flowers—Waltz of the Flowers, Awakening of Flora, Spectre de la Rose—but flora in its entirety has rarely been the subject of a full work, and certainly never through a First Nations perspective.
Following a warmly received Melbourne premiere, Flora arrived in Sydney last Tuesday night. Created by Mirning woman Frances Rings, with an original score by Kalkadungu man William Barton, the work brings together the distinct artistic lineages of Bangarra and The Australian Ballet on a large scale. It is the fourth collaboration between the two companies and the first under their artistic directors David Hallberg and Rings.
The subject is strong and original: Australian native flora as a metaphor for First Nations experience of colonisation.
The assembled creative team is another strong draw. Sydney audiences were treated to Barton’s exquisite collaboration with Sydney Dance Company in 2025, and are longtime followers of Rings as dancer, choreographer and now director.
The ballet unfolds over two acts across a series of titled scenes—Mother Seed, Sleeping Yams, Grass Keepers, bringing to mind those enchanting fairies’ names in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but with an Australian twist.
The ballet opens with a recorded soundscape setting the scene for the world we are entering. Roots dangle from above. Elizabeth Gadsby’s set quickly places us in an under-earth landscape. Below, the dancers strike sticks into the ground as if preparing the soil. It does indeed feel we are in “deep time,” as the program notes suggest. From the pit, Barton’s orchestral score, performed by the Australian Opera Orchestra under Joel Bass, gradually rises to meet it.
Rings’ choreographic vernacular is striking: its hard-edged accents, grounded steps, flexed and sickled feet. Bodies ripple. Dancers slip seamlessly into and out of the floor. The ensemble morphs in and through intricate patterns then moves as one. With Meriam Samsep woman Grace Lillian Lee’s draped, textured costumes in varying hues of red, it sometimes feels like a single organism—limbs snaking in and out.
It is quickly apparent that the strength of the work is in its fully integrated design. The sleeping yams descend from the ceiling like dripping chrysalises among Gadsby’s curtain of roots, a hypnotic image as they writhe and uncoil on their descent to the ground.
Karen Norris’s lighting masterfully renders each segment in a new hue and texture, transforming the stage.
Grace Lillian Lee’s costumes play a crucial role, giving each scene a distinct identity—one spiky, the next drapey, another bulbous. Her yam cocoons and specimen bags are mesmerising. All in all, a visual treat.
However, while the costumes, set and lighting announce each new idea, the choreography and the music lacked, for me, a play of contrast and pacing to keep me on the edge of my seat. The language, tempo and overall pulse remained so similar I was lulled by a sameness of sounds, flurries and gestures.
I also found myself wanting a stronger centre to hold onto—a melodic line, or a guiding presence. Barton’s score last year for the Sydney Dance Company serves as a good example. In that work, his presence gave the piece a centre of gravity. The music had direction because he did. Without that anchor, the result is something decorative rather than propulsive.
The dancers approach it with total integrity. The Australian Ballet cohort fully embrace Rings’ physical language, while the Bangarra dancers perform with compelling grounded, embodied dynamism. The mixed ensemble of different traditions is riveting.
Even so, I would have loved to see these extremely talented artists pushed further, allowing their differences to generate greater contrast in the movement language, and to carry more of the storytelling adding another layer of meaning.
The work invites contemplation with its themes of invasion, displacement and the erasure of personhood. When Golden Wattle is literally swamped in English words and dictates like “Aboriginal people shall not be counted”—the image has visceral power. It’s one that won’t leave me.
The significance of this work remains. Collaborations of this nature are essential to the evolution of Australian dance, and that these themes are addressed by our national ballet company—with its bigger budgets, resources, and reach—matters. I was awakened to ideas that have stayed with me since, noticing every Banksia and Grevillea I pass. But for a work of this scale and importance, I would have liked something more developed—more surprising, complex and nuanced than the current loosely chronological, episodic structure provides.
On that note, we tend to treat a premiere as a finished product but often works need “first outings” to find themselves, and time—sometimes years—to fully emerge and I would love to see a ballet of this kind given the time and opportunity to become something so unique and beloved it has a long life in our repertoire, in Australia and beyond.
-Emma Sandall