OUR land people stories

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu is a Yolngu woman from the Gumatj clan of North East Arnhem Land, and a renowned painter whose work has gained notoriety for its union of traditional techniques with non-traditional materials and personal subject matter. In its most simplistic reading, the same can be said of 2016's OUR land people stories.

Yunupingu's painting Buffalo Story depicts, with a wild immediacy and fervent movement, the day when she was gored by a water buffalo as a young woman. For Bangarra Artistic Director and choreographer Stephen Page, her work "reminds me of why I started dancing as a young man — because it was my calling." This creative exchange has resulted in an extended meditation on the experience  of Indigenous life today, shaped by the shadows — and light — of recent and ancient Aboriginal history.

The performance of OUR land people stories is comprised of two 25-minute sections; Macq and Miyagan respectively, followed by the longer 44-minute Nyapanyapa, which has a depth of feeling that consolidates both the viscerally charged first act, and softer, meditative tone of the second. 

In each case, set designer Jacob Nash's inspired, impermanent architecture vibrates with its own glorious energy. Each structure acts as a sort of totem around which the dancers congregate, a creative element also present in Bangarra's production of Ochre earlier this year. A series of massive stalks of native grass crosshatch the air above the dancers like a canopy; its effect is to miniaturise the dancers' bodies, yet also shelter them. In Nyapanyapa, dancers leap and thrust with bushels of eucalypts in hand and form parades of fluid bodies to spirit burning smoke sticks across the stage, leaving circles of smoke in their wake.

The Bangarra dancers catch your breath when they achieve moments of sublime imperfection — when ancient movements are re-interpreted in the bodies of young performers. It's a cohesive and totally immersive experience.