Bangarra Dance Theatre
YULDEA
REVIEWED: DRAMA THEATRE, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE - JUNE 15
The company is continuing to thrive under the directorship of Frances Rings, if this production is anything to go by.
BANGARRA Dance Theatre’s newest production Yuldea shows that the company is continuing to thrive under the directorship of Frances Rings. Being so heavily shaped by the direction, vision and choreographic style of former Artistic Director Stephen Page there was always a slight question about what Bangarra would look like after he moved on. But with Yuldea, Artistic Director Frances Rings’s newest choreographed work, there is no doubt Bangarra Dance Theatre is on the right track – continuing to produce works that inform and enchant their audiences.
Yuldea tells the story of the Anangu of the Great Victorian Desert, and the Nunga from the far west region of South Australia. Frances Rings is from the Wirangu and Mirning tribes of this region so in telling the story of her own mob she is also bringing something of her own identity to audiences based on the east coast of Australia. The narrative focuses largely on the environmental damage wrought first by the building of the Trans-Australian Railway in the early 1900s, and secondly by the atomic testing at
