Spirit: A Retrospective 2021

Nature and Indigenous spirits are powerfully invoked in this Bangarra dance retrospective staged for the Sydney Festival so rightly on the Headland in the Barangaroo Reserve. 

Against Jacob Nash’s beautiful forest and landscape backdrops, etched against blazes of colour, 20 dancers perform snippets from nine works. The vast headland stage is flanked by side screens offering closeup views of the dancers – and the intensity on their faces.

Torres Strait Islander elder dancer Elma Kris brings a singular gravitas, often as the healer brandishing smoking sticks and bush potions. She anchors the two longest works, from Brolga, around a young woman lost in two conflicting flocks of spirits, and the last, from Nyapanyapa, choregraphed by Stephen Page in tribute to the death in 2016 of his brother, David.  

David’s compositions, often in collaboration with Steve Francis, link all the other works – a glorious soundscape of didgeridoo, violins, keyboards, bird calls, chants, abuzz with bush sounds and often driving melody.

Voice comes too from East Arnhem Land traditional dancer Djakapurra Munyarryun. Almost all extracts are from works around traditional cultures, notably three dynamic parts from Ochres, choreographed by Page and Bernadette Walong-Sene. 

Page’s other work with urban or post-1788 stories aren’t included, except for a part from Spear in which men, in jeans, turn aggressively on an outsider.  Why?  Such dramatic details of storytelling are unsaid in this wash of snippets.  But still magic and feeling rises from the stage, so well conjured by Jennifer Irwin’s astonishing costumes, weaved it seems from the very leaves and bush of country.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Jacquie Manning

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