Bangarra Dance Theatre: Dance Clan 3

Bangarra Dance Theatre: "Dance Clan 3" -
Bangarra Studio Theatre, Pier 4,  19 November -

Bangarra’s intimate studio theatre was overflowing for the opening night of “Dance Clan 3”, a program initiated by artistic director Stephen Page in 1998 to give company artists a chance to tell their own stories.

Nurturing story-telling is part of Bangarra’s commitment as a company - it guards an important aspect of Aboriginal culture and pushes the power of dance to fill in gaps of meaning and memory.  Four of Bangarra’s senior women artists put their hands up to tell stories, which ranged in time and place, inspired by their heritage, personal experience, and other cultural influences.

We move from the Broome of Tara Gower’s grandparents in Nala; to Jasmin Sheppard’s Sydney-set 19th century Macq; Deborah Brown’s film exploration of Torres Strait pearl divers, and Yolande Brown’s Central Desert Imprint. With no interval, the stories flow from one to the next with a fluid sound score by Huey Benjamin, David Page and Steve Francis.

A new choreographic voice emerges with each work. Nala, begins with a delightfully playful scene in deckchairs at Broome’s infamous outdoor cinema. The strong opening, hinting at a new voice mixing frivolity, imagination and Aboriginal dance, falls away into less inventive duos and dances, trying too hard to depict the theme of divided social and cultural values. With more time and work, Nala could become a fascinating piece.  

Sheppard’s Macq is an accomplished work exploring the 1816 March of Macquarie. Her Madhatter’s Tea Party opening, skillfully revealing the consequences of well-meant social policy against real, fleshy, feeling human forms, reminds me of Kurt Joos’s The Green Table. Costuming and design by Jennifer Irwin and Jacob Nash beautifully marry the style of the work, the movement and the dancers’ expressions. Daniel Riley was a powerful presence as Governor Macquarie, though perhaps the performance could have had more subtlety.

Using excerpts from Kings of the Coral Sea and Pearlers of the Coral Sea, Dive is a charming amalgamation of ethnographic film footage and dance. Deborah Brown’s use of French voice-over throughout, works brilliantly, plunging us into the 1950s. The film melts in and out of old footage with subtle, well-expounded choreography. Despite some dubious edits within the dance sequences, this work is full of potential.

Finally, a diagonal floor light fades up to illuminate the way for Elma Kris’s compelling solo descent in Imprint, inspired by artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s yam-dreaming stories. Yolande Brown’s striking imagery and designs explore the kindling of art, in particular batik, which was learnt and practiced by women in Utopia to support their native title claim.

Combining Indigenous dance vocabulary with contemporary dance theatre can at times be problematic.  The integrity of the traditional movement is compromised by less adeptly managed steps, lifts and transitions. However, all four choreographers show very individual voices and vocabularies and all the works possess choreographic and narrative ideas which, with more time, work and perseverance, will become important pieces of Bangarra’s songline.

- EMMA SANDALL