OUR land people stories – Bangarra Dance Theatre’s brilliant new triple bill – begins with a corpse on stage. A woman, her hair matted with thick, dark blood, moves around the body, mourning. She wails; she tries, torturously, to pick him up. At one point it seems that he might come alive. But he never does. Throughout, she dances her duet with a dead man.
Choreographed by the veteran Bangarra dancer Jasmin Sheppard, Macq, as this first segment is called, relays the hidden history of the Appin massacre in Sydney’s southwest. In 1816, governor Lachlan Macquarie, dubbed the father of the nation, ordered “terrible and exemplary punishments” on “hostile tribes”. More than a dozen Aboriginals were either shot or driven off a cliff to their deaths.
In a macabre twist, Macquarie had previously invited the “natives” to a picnic. Sheppard paints a scene reminiscent of a grotesque Mad Hatter’s tea party. Reeking of pomposity, the British entertain the locals decked in red military coats and ornate dresses. They spin around a dining table decorated with the excesses of the empire: a candelabra, a cake stand. Later, Macquarie scribbles furiously as extracts of his (less than flattering) diary boom over the loud speaker.
First performed in 2013, Macq has been resurrected for the 200th anniversary of the massacre. It is also the last score that longtime Bangarra composer David Page worked on before his sudden death in April. In light of this, the haunting music, already full of lament and sorrow, hangs with pathos, an emotion also emitted by the extraordinary performances seen on stage.
This trio of works is not only about bloodshed and loss, however. The artistic director Stephen Page (brother of David) is careful to steer the night into more hopeful themes for the two new works that follow, including the ties of kinship and the power of art.
Miyagan, an abstract exploration of the complex web of relationships in the Wiradjuri nation, makes up the second act. Choreographed by the dancer cousins Beau Dean Riley Smith and Daniel Riley (who discovered their family connection while working at Bangarra), it is set on the Talbragar Reserve near Dubbo, where both men can trace their family history.
Dancers move seamlessly beneath the shadow of sculptural branches decked in glistening white and grey feathers that emulate emus. Yet Miyagan pales in comparison with the near operatic storytelling that precedes it, rendering large parts forgettable. What sticks is the music: composed by ARIA award-winning Paul Mac, it is inspired by the sounds of the reserve, from clanging clap sticks to the caw of cockatoos.
Finishing off the evening is Stephen Page’s impactful Nyapanyapa, a celebration of the renowned bark tree artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. As her paintings are projected on to the stage, performers bring them alive, depicting everything from dancing girls to a dream-like retelling of Nyapanyapa’s traumatic goring by a wild buffalo as a child in the 1970s.
Nyapanyapa herself becomes a character in the work: an old lady thrust suddenly into a dance hall where she jives, confused and bewildered; a child fighting off the buffalo by climbing tree branches as wild dogs attack. It is the latter moment – in which two girls elegantly transform into fish and a male dancer wearing giant horns shimmers with sweaty strength as the angry buffalo – that remains the most visceral.
For all its anger and energy, OUR land people stories, dedicated to David Page, ends on a moment of quiet. Dancers, decked in stone grey mottled sarongs, lie down, transforming themselves into a landscape of rocks. Over this still terrain a vast close up of Nyapanyapa’s face and all-seeing eyes bear down on the audience. Ultimately it is as if she is assessing us all.
