Bangarra: No other dance company on the planet could perform Yuldea with such passionate intensity

During Yuldea’s post-performance celebration – which was hosted at The Pavilion in Arts Centre Melbourne – Rings gave a moving speech about the inaugural full-length work she has created for the company since committing to carrying Page’s extraordinary legacy into Bangarra’s next cycle: “This is a story not only about the events that impacted on that site, but also about the survival and the resilience of blackfellas, of Anangu and of Indigenous people, across this country. We know that this is not the only place that was impacted – everywhere, here where we stand – colonisation left its scar and scorched its way across our country. But kinship ties endure – from people to family, family to land, from land to sky – keeping people together.

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“The stage for us is a sovereign space. It’s a place of truth-telling and healing. It’s a sacred place of transformation and hope, not only for our audiences but for our communities who entrust their stories to us and the dancers who carry it each night on stage.”

Named after a location on the edge of the Nullabor in the Far West Region of South Australia, Yuldea (now known mainly by its anglicised name: Ooldea) tells the story of Rings’ own mob. Her grandmother was born in Yuldea and, through her mother’s side, Rings is a descendant of the Wirangu and Mirning clans. But after her parents split when she was three, Rings was raised by her father – a German migrant who worked on the railways – and spent much of her childhood travelling with him as he followed work from Port Augusta to Albany to Kalgoorlie.

Yuldea, once a permanent clay pan waterhole surrounded by sand dunes, is a place of high cultural significance to the Indigenous inhabitants. It was also once an important meeting and ceremonial place that connected dreaming stories and trading routes. That is until the site was used as a camp and water supply for workers building the Trans-Australian Railway in the early 1900s, with many Aṉangu people displaced and forced to leave their ancestral home. Construction had a considerable impact on country and, once the black desert oaks were cut down, sand blew into this precious water source that had sustained life for thousands of years. The Kokatha people, who knew the knowledge systems of how and where to find water, were herded onto a reserve and the desert water soak eventually dried out.

Soon after, atomic testing began at Maralinga – just north of Yuldea – which had a lasting impact on the health and well-being of the Anangu people. In a final act of displacement, clans were separated and scattered in all directions, unable to be reunited with their family members.

Yuldea is composed of four chronological acts. For Act 1, Supernova, Rings worked alongside with a Cultural Astronomy Consultant for the first time, tapping into Karlie Noon’s extensive knowledge of sky stories and lore.

During this entire performance, dancers use repeated gestures: pointing skyward while interpreting the night sky or covering their mouths to signify missionaries preventing the Indigenous people from speaking their traditional languages. There’s a groundedness and fluidity to the dancers’ movement, which ebbs and flows throughout like the four elements of matter. In Act 2, Kapi (water), we meet some Water Diviners that the Kokatha people observe and follow to find water: Birds (a female quintet), Dingoes (a male quintet) and the Red Mallee tree (a standout duet performed by Daniel Mateo and Kassidy Waters). The pair enter the stage with Waters on Mateo’s shoulders, representing this tree whose root systems are a source of water.

Costume designer Jennifer Irwin has been designing Bangarra’s costumes for 30-plus years. Using feathers, textured fabrics and flashes of colour, Irwin cleverly incorporates animalistic features (eg. feathered epaulettes for birds, striped tails for dingoes) and her costumes – some of which are currently displayed in the Arts Centre’s foyer – are more like wearable art that complements the choreography and completes the dancers’ meticulously executed lines.

Elizabeth Gadsby’s set design features a vertical, floor-to-ceiling rope forest, which is illuminated by embedded neon drops and borders the semi-circular performance space. During a pivotal section of Yuldea, dancers burst through this curtain tethered to elasticated bungee cords, reaching for and sometimes grasping one another – as if fighting to break free – before being violently separated and disappearing from view; props to Joshua Thomson, Yuldea’s Aerial & Acrobatic Creative Consultant.

Rings’ choreography effortlessly incorporates partner work and lifts, with dancers soaring into the air unexpectedly and with no obvious preparation preempting their pathways through space.

Act 3, Empire, explores the devastating impact that the Trans-Australian Railway’s construction and atomic testing at Maralinga had on the Nullarbor Plain. Black Mist, which concludes this section, features Rikki Mason writhing around on stage as black ticker tape rains down, illuminated by Karen Norris’ inspired lighting design.

Yuldea features original music composed by Leon Rodgers, 2021’s recipient of the David Page Music Fellowship. Radio announcement snippets cast an uncomfortable colonial shadow and industrial sounds – creaking, cracking and snapping – are deliberately at odds with field recordings of birdsong (recorded on country) and organic piano elements within this brilliant, evocative score. Guest composers Electric Fields (Zaachariaha Fielding, who often sings in his traditional languages of the Anangu people and producer Michael Ross) contributed the opening score, Supernova, and also worked alongside Rodgers to compose the final piece, Ooldea Spirit.

An illuminated, serpent-like structure stretches across the full length of the stage throughout Yuldea. Post-show, Rings informs us that Indigenous people often referred to these steam locomotives as “metal serpents”:

“They’d come across the Nullarbor and you could feel the vibrations, and you could hear the whistling on the tracks, and mob thought it was a big serpent coming across the desert.”

Going into Act 4, this serpentine shape transforms into a boomerang light, which was inspired by the Yalata boomerang sign at the entrance to this community: “They say, ‘Wherever you go, the boomerang will always bring you back home’,” Rings later enlightens. The boomerang is a symbol of hope and, as Yuldea concludes, the dancers look skyward once more as constellations are reflected in the black-gloss stage surface.

No other dance company on the planet could perform Yuldea with such intensity, passion and emotional heft. By transforming the way stories are told through movement and gesture, Bangarra works tirelessly to open up conversations and hopefully shift our understanding of the Indigenous experience. This company’s ongoing commitment to passing on knowledge and truth-telling is deeply felt by all in attendance.

As an audience member, the Yuldea experience feels like wandering through country as fragments of history unfold before us.

Post-show during her speech at The Pavilion, we learn that Yuldea’s structure was informed by the “living museum” Rings encountered while visiting the Yalata Aboriginal Community to seek permission and allow the elders to shape her telling of these stories. After describing the beautiful bow-shaped trees that acted as shelters for elders who were taken from the Yuldea site and placed at the old mission, Rings recalls, “You look down and you see the medicine bottles and the old flour tins and cooking tins…”

Then Rings poignantly weighs in on the upcoming Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum: “As a country, we are presented with this rare opportunity not only to write the wrongs of the past but to find the courage to look in the mirror and to make the right decisions about the nation we wanna become. And to affirm a future that no longer hides behind its truths, but grows because of them.”

Bangarra presents Yuldea on Wurundjeri Country at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne until 7 October before heading to Djaara Country for a pair of performances at Bendigo’s Ulumbarra Theatre on 13 & 14 October 2023.