Gary Lang NT Dance Company’s The Other Side of Me begins WA tour

Geoffrey Williams reports.

In the hugely privileged world we inhabit as theatre reviewers, there are often experiences that continue to haunt us (mostly in good ways), long after we have seen and written about them. The Gary Lang NT Dance Company’s The Other Side of Me remains, for me, one such experience.

As I wrote in my review at the time, ‘So how, as a white, middle-class, middle-aged, privileged, and moderately well-educated man do I begin to write about my experience of this performance? The starting point might well be the finishing point – when I was so emotionally overwhelmed as it reached its climax that as soon as it ended, I hurriedly left the auditorium a sobbing mess …’

Produced by BlakDance, The Other Side of Me shares a poignant new angle on Stolen Generations; one young man adopted and raised in a small UK village. Stranded between two families, two countries and two cultures, this delicate duet explores colonisation’s grey areas, its wide-ranging destructive impact for all involved. It offers its audience the opportunity to experience the singing of a young man’s spirit home.

Central to the work is a collection of personal letters and poems which offer insights into the mind of a young man struggling to re-evaluate his life as he tries to connect with his First Nations Australian origins. The production was inspired by the life of an Aboriginal man, born in the 1960s in the Northern Territory, adopted by a white English family, and raised in a remote hamlet in the English countryside. The ease and haste of the adoption process is typical of the history of Aboriginal adoption in Australia at that time.

Of this international, cross-cultural collaboration with Northumbria University (UK), Choreographer and Larrakia man, Gary Lang says, ‘I focused on the original crime done to him – the loss of his identity ... what he lost by not knowing the other side of himself. Split in two, each half depicted by a single dancer. Ultimately what this work became is a path to help him travel back so he knows it’s ok to come home where his spirit should be. That way we honour him – and all the others this happened to. Because this story is not just his story – it’s our story. It belongs to Australia.’

BlakDance Co-CEO and Executive Producer Merindah Donnelly said, ‘This small, determined dance company creates powerful, riveting productions that reverberate throughout our land and into international contexts. Walk back out into the world enchanted, challenged, and uplifted!’.

Western Australia tour venues and dates

Sat 27 April Arts Margaret River, Margaret River

Tue 30–Thu 2 May Heath Ledger Theatre, Perth

Fri 10 May Red Earth Arts Precinct, Karratha

Fri 17 May Carnarvon Civic Centre, Carnarvon

For more information and to book tickets, visit: https://www.artsculturetrust.wa.gov.au/venues/state-theatre-centre-of-wa/whats-on/the-other-side-of-me/

Images: Alexander Abbot and 'Cheeky' Chandler Connell in The Other Side of Me, 2023 Darwin Festival Season. Photography by Paz Tassone.

You can read Geoffrey Williams’s review of the 2023 Darwin Festival season of The Other Side of Me here: https://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/other-side-me