After 35 years telling our First Nations’ stories, our leading Indigenous performing arts company is for the first time exploring our close neighbour’s indigenous voices.

Bangarra Dance Theatre has collaborated with Māori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson for Horizon, which opens at QPAC’s Playhouse on August 8.

The most striking aspect of the cross-cultural collaboration will be seeing Bangarra’s dancers perform a contemporary version of the iconic Haka.

Patterson is CEO and artistic director of The New Zealand Dance Company in Auckland. He and Horizon’s two other choreographers – former Bangarra artists Deborah Brown and Sani Townson – are linked by Oceania island heritage. While he explores his Aotearoa New Zealand roots, Brown and Townson draw on their Torres Strait Island ancestry.

Each creator has explored the theme of home – what it means to them and how they carry it with them in their contemporary lives.

Townson’s 20-minute opening Kulka, which premiered in 2023, draws on the customs, culture and identity of Saibai Island’s people, the Saybaylayg. Known for agile movement and angular arm lines, they are said to “dance like the wind” and sing with a mesmerising soul-piercing power.

The second act, The Light Inside, comprises a complementary diptych performed sequentially. Although originally it was hoped that The Light Inside would be a single piece jointly created by Brown and Patterson, with both based far from Bangarra’s Sydney home, logistics and scheduling determined that they create parallel pieces drawn from their collaborative preparation.

“When Moss (Patterson) and I first started talking about this show we were looking at things that we have in common,” Brown says. “Navigating, duality, community, family and mothers were all words that came up. So, when we talked about navigating, my ancestry as a seafaring people means my section draws from the reef and the sea.”

Accordingly, her reflection Gur/Adabad/Salt Water flows into Patterson’s Wai Maori/Fresh Water to create a 72-minute passage. 

Horizon’s broader theme is especially resonant for Brown, who’s experiencing a homecoming on multiple levels. On one hand she’s back living in the Mansfield family home where she grew up in suburban Brisbane, looking after her ageing parents, and on the other she’s passing the baton to a new generation of her artistic clan.

As many will know, facing such generational shifts and returning to one’s roots tend to prompt deep personal reflection.

“You just grow up and move on and have a career, and then you start to question all of those things as you get older and you start looking at your parents getting older,” Brown observes. “When I came back, I started to realise what seeds Mum had planted and how she had kept culture alive at home.”

Some of those were literal – a mango tree grown from the seed of a mango sent from Torres Strait’s Badu Island by Brown’s great-aunt, as well as tropical frangipani and hibiscus – while others were symbolic, sown within Brown.

“I started to look up to the stars a lot in our backyard,” Brown says. “Mansfield’s become quite industrialised but I would still think, I know where north is. I know where the Torres Strait Islands are.”

Beyond serving as a compass for her people to navigate across the sea, the stars help them know seasons too, she notes.

The seasonal change signified by the blue star’s twinkle and shimmer (caused by humidity, Brown explains) gave rise to a “really beautiful” solo for the longest-serving member of Bangarra’s current crop of 16, Lillian Banks.

The pair bonded during Banks’ first year in 2018 after she became ill during an international tour and the retired veteran, who was there in an off-stage capacity, filled in. Then later on, Banks inherited Brown’s Terrain solo.

Blue Star is only the second solo Brown has choreographed. “You just know that there’s a dialogue that’s easy to have and a shorthand … you can just go, ‘Okay, let’s just fly’,” she says.

Conceptually, twinkle and shimmer were another commonality in the two choreographers’ creations, adds Brown.

“There’s a lot of shimmering in Moss’s work. I was looking at everything … how the stars had shimmer reflecting in the water and how, as a people, we have a shimmer and a light inside.”

Banks’ experience working with Patterson was also rewarding, even if the Haka’s physicality and vocalisations challenged her in completely new ways.

“The movement was really hard, and I’ve never ever had to use my voice,” she says. “For us women here we’re very strong inside without being vocal about it and our presence and spirit will come out, so that was really interesting.

“It’s different to what we’d normally do but I love it because it shows the power of girls, especially. It was amazing to use that strength and energy in a different way.”

Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Horizon, QPAC Playhouse, August 8-17.

 qpac.com.au

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