Many people’s only experience with artists is when they view their work as audience members, where much of the in-between of the artist’s life is hidden or unsaid. After his contract ended with a prominent dance company, Rodney Bell Ngāti Maniapoto stepped off the stage into homelessness. Now back home in Aotearoa (New Zealand), he reflects on those contrasting experiences in a mix of dance and storytelling.
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The spirit of collaboration and love of movement comes alive in the Dance Bites program for 2022 from FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres. Let’s DANCE brings together a double bill of movement works roots in connection, reciprocity, and collaboration between artists, performers and audiences, and art and technology.
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As we continue to face worsening climate catastrophes and conditions, many across Australia are calling on the nation to embrace the traditions of custodianship that Aboriginal people have been using to care for the land for millennia. Ten years on from the first production of Terrain, Bangarra Dance Theatre revisits the meaning and messages of caring for Country under the direction of new artistic director Frances Rings.
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Every few months someone on Twitter will dig up a famously ironic quote from scientist Clifford Stoll in a 1995 MPR interview discussing the future of the Internet: “I think it’s grossly oversold and within two or three years people will shrug and say, ‘Uh yep, it was a fad of the early 90’s and now, oh yeah, it still exists but hey, I’ve got a life to lead and work to do. I don’t have time to waste online.'” Thinking about how wrong he was is either funny or chilling, depending on your own predictions for the future.
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American policy analyst Michele Wucker in her 2016 book the Gray Rhino referred to dangers people choose to ignore as “A highly probable, high-impact threat: something we ought to see coming, like a two-tonne rhinoceros aiming its horn in our direction and preparing to charge.” Inspired by this quote Grey Rhino explores the way people deny, ignore, and procrastinate on impending problems to their own detriment.
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When the future or even the present feel so pressing it can be difficult to see the relevance of old stories and traditions. But in this collaborative performance between Bangarra Dance Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company, the past is shown to be ongoing with powerful lessons that ancestors can teach about resilience and care.
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If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s the necessity of community resilience. As wave after wave of COVID-19 variances have hit Australian shores, our communities have taken a beating but the future promises even more challenges as climate change continues to alter the systems and processes that hold our society together. The Pulse recognises and recreates these societal cycles in a marriage of light, sound, and movement.
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This year marks 25 years since Mimi was commissioned by Festival of Perth and the trans-Indigenous and intercultural performance company Marrugeku was born. In celebration, performance practise publisher Performance Research Books has collaborated with the company to bring a comprehensive history of their performances and practises to print.
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The first new full-length work from Bangarra in three years tells the stories and knowledge of the Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri people from the Kimberley and Great Sandy Desert regions. The combination of traditional dances, interpretations of true stories, and exploration of colonisation in SandSong are performed in honour of cultural collaborator and Wangkatjungka woman Ningali Josie Lawford-Wolf.
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For a dancer, the body is an instrument, a tool, a direct connection to the spirit. INTACT, then, uses movement and dance to explore the body after injury, processing trauma, and being reinvented. For the performer, the relationship between mind and body is paramount to telling this story.
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Night Writes 