15/07/2025
Review by arts editor Sarah McNeill
Shining a light on Bangarra
Illume
Bangarra Dance Theatre
State Theatre Centre
“For thousands of years the language of light has energised and sustained indigenous cultures,” says Bangarra’s artistic director Frances Rings.
Light is the central character in Illume, a dance cycle of 11 sections, each one woven through and connected by various forms of light.
As the company’s new artistic director, Frances wanted to take the company in a new direction and Illume is its first collaboration with a visual artist.
Darrel Sibosado comes from the tiny community of Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula, in the northwest of WA. Here, he developed his art practice of engraving ceremonial symbols on mother-of-pearl shells, expanding it into large-scale, neon LED sculptural installations.
His abstract sculptural symbols dominate the stage in flashes of LED, like lightening strikes.
The ephemeral landscape shimmers with starlight and pearlescent illuminations; there are harsh tubes of neon light, cables of light embracing a community and woven into fishing nets, firelight, a giant conch emitting a shaft of light, and the growing tempest of light storms and pollution that deaden the stars and dampen the spiritual.
Illume is a new style of storytelling for Bangarra, with Brendon Boney’s propulsive electronic score, and Damien Cooper’s extraordinary lighting combined indigenous storytelling that stretches across millennia but is so immediate and local.
Similarly, the tight-knit, 18-strong ensemble work together in a combination of highly contemporary moves with the grounded indigenous dancing for which Bangarra became renowned.
It is a wonderfully ambitious production that illuminates the direction Frances intends to take the company.
Pictures: Illume: Cables of light are woven into the community of dancers.
Artist Darrell Sibosado with his sculptural ceremonial symbols for Sydney Biennale
Photos by Daniel Boud.
