Terrain

Terrain
Bangarra Dance Theatre. Artistic Director: Stephen Page. Choreographer: Frances Rings. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. July 18 – Aug 18, 2012. Tours to Wollongong, Adelaide, Canberra and Brisbane.

The recent stunning transmutation of Lake Eyre from dry salt through to lush inland sea – and its Arabunna inhabitants – was the inspiration for this first full-length work by Bangarra artist-in-residence, Frances Rings.

These shifting landscapes are explored by Bangarra’s twelve dust-clad indigenous dancers, in a hymn to country told through nine distinct chapters.

The moods and colour shifts are vividly enhanced by painterly back projections of aerial abstracts from set designer Jacob Nash, and the astonishing work of costume designer Jennifer Irwin. Dancers are variously clad in leafy net leotards, decked with fragments suggestive of flora and fauna, or in shimmering blacks and colourful sarongs. But the real star is the magical soundscape by David Page, blending elemental sounds of wind and rumbling earth with orchestral strings, sound sticks and synthesised melody, profoundly punctuated with local language and chant.

Through it all, dancers cluster together, as though peeping through vegetation, or arc high with a surprising dance classicalism - adding a welcome lyricism to earthy movements. This is a fine new generation of

Bangarra dancers, and the women especially are notable. Rings delivers choreography which is beautiful, distinctive and evocative of ecology. Its wider arc of meaning or developing narrative escaped me, and often the nine segments were repetitive in pace. The final, almost dance club number redeemed these doubts, when swirling boy/girl partnering suggested the coming full flood of the waters. Artistic director Stephen Page could have a worthy successor in Frances Rings.

Martin Portus

Image: Male ensemble & Daniel Riley-McKinley. Photographer: Greg Barrett.

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