Bangarra’s SandSong stirs the soul

The magisterial First Nations dance company brings stories of the Great Sandy Desert to the stage in an intensel moving performance.

Dancers Rika Hamaguchi and Baden Hitchcock in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s SandSong at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains the name of someone who has passed. The family of Ningali Lawford-Wolf has given the media permission to use her name.

Bangarra’s last new work before SandSong was performed in 2019 and celebrated Bangarra’s 30th anniversary. It was called 30 Years of Sixty-Five Thousand, a reference to the almost unimaginably long connection Australia’s First Nations people have with this land.

All Bangarra performances are about that connection and SandSong is no exception. It is, however, exceptional. SandSong is a profound experience, enlightening and moving as it encapsulates everything Bangarra has needed to say in the past three decades.

There is the strange but wonderful sensation of being outside of time as SandSong ranges across those thousands of years, describing a vast arc of history that doesn’t stop with today. At the end it reaches into the future by circling back on itself. Sixty-five thousand years, and more, in 80 minutes.

SandSong is subtitled Stories from the Great Sandy Desert, a geographical and social anchoring that gives the work its intense focus. It was suggested to Bangarra by Ningali Lawford-Wolf, a company member before she became a celebrated actor.

Lawford-Wolf didn’t live to see it come to the stage but she is woven into its fabric.

Her red-dust country is mystically evoked in Jacob Nash’s set, lit by Nick Schlieper, with the dancers dressed, brilliantly as usual, by Jennifer Irwin. Lawford-Wolf’s family’s dances are represented; their lore, customs and experi­ences are shared.

In an act of love and homage, Lawford-Wolf’s voice is embedded in Steve Francis’s stupendous score, which mixes singing, speaking and traditional language with sounds from nature and ancient and contemporary musical modes. It sweeps along like an ever-changing but eternal river.

The choreography also flows through time and space, eloquently showing the nourishing good and the shameful bad as part of the continuum. It’s an unusual but stirring collective effort by Stephen Page, Frances Rings and the 16 marvellous dancers. Many in the company are relatively new but you wouldn’t know it. Bangarra emerges from the enforced Covid break in magisterial form.

SandSong. Bangarra Dance Theatre. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, June 11. Tickets: $85-$109. Bookings: [phone]. Duration: 80min, no interval. Until July 10; then Canberra, July 15-17; Bendigo, July 23-24; Brisbane, August 13-21; Melbourne, August 27-September 4.