Capturing the essence of Country in his art is something First Nations artist Darrell Sibosado has been doing throughout his career. But how to capture that essence on stage? Who could possibly perform such a thing?
Bangarra Dance Theatre, of course, Australia’s internationally renowned leading indigenous arts company.
Sibosado, a Goolarrgon Bard visual artist from Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia, teamed up with Mirning woman and Bangarra artistic director Frances Rings to create Illume, which comes to Brisbane for a shortish season from August 1 as part of QPAC’s signature Clancestry, celebrating First Nations art and culture. (The show is the company’s first visual arts collaboration.)
Rings says Clancestry is one of the highlights of the year for Bangarra.
“We are thrilled to be included in the program again and look forward to sharing Illume with Queensland audiences, celebrating First Nations arts, story and culture,” she says.
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Inspired by Sibosado’s Bard-Bardi Jawi Country on the north-western coast of Western Australia, Illume draws together music, visual arts and dance to explore the ways light has captivated and sustained Indigenous cultural existence for millennia.
Rings and Sibosado’s collaboration delves into artificial light pollution and its disruption to land and sky, devastating First Nations people’s connections to sky country and limiting their ability to share celestial knowledge and sky lore. Illume explores the awe of light, a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. It charts the impacts of light pollution in a climate emergency.
“This collaboration uses both choreographic and visual art perspectives in a unique approach that conveys complex themes about light, culture and environmental issues,” Rings says. “I hope that by intersecting our artistic practices, we potentially create something more innovative and impactful that honours our First Nations cultural storytelling.”
Sibosado has known Rings since they met in the late 1980s when both were students at NAISDA Dance College. (Sibosado says dance was not, ultimately, his career path but studying it gives him some perspective for working with Bangarra.) He says he is thrilled to be working with Frances Rings.
“I have watched her focus, commit and grow into the artist creator she is today, and I have always been intrigued by her movement style and the composition of her work,” Sibosado says. “My work is steeped in the context of where I’m from. I am enjoying the process of seeing how our different practices respond, merge and translate to express the rhythm and essence of my people and my country.”
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Sibosado says he uses light in Illume to “show the interconnectedness of all things”.
“There’s no narrative but it is about the essence of my country, how it feels, how it looks and that includes the night sky,” he says. “It’s all about light and light can be a metaphor.”
Where Sibosado lives light is unaffected by city lights, which create artificial light pollution which most of us experience.
“That may obscure the natural sky but it’s still there I we turn own the artificial light,” he says. He actually used LED and other light sources in his work though, quite happily, to evoke country. He has lived in the Big Smoke but prefers life in a small community.
Working alongside Sibosado to bring his designs to the Bangarra stage are set designer Charles Davis, costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby, lighting designer Damien Cooper, Wiradjuri/Gamilaroi man and composer Brendon Boney, cultural consultant Trevor Sampi, a Bardi Jawi man from Lombadina, and Craig Wilkinson, AV designer.
“I worked with all the creatives individually,” Sibosado says. “They all came up to Lombadina and I went down to work with them.”
He spent a month in Sydney and was there when the show opened. Now it will be touring major cities and then regional Australia and in 2027 the final show will be in Lombadina. They have a stage?
“Not a stage … it’s more a mound of red dirt,” Sibosado says. “It won’t be the full production.”
But it will quite a homecoming for Illume to be performed where it all started.
Illume plays QPAC’s Playhouse, August 1-9.