Stephen Page takes Bangarra to the big screen

Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Stephen Page prepares to show his first feature film.

BANGARA 11TH AUG 2015 PHOTO: GLENN HUNT Director Stephen Page with some of his Bangara dancers that are in his new dance movie: Spear. (L-R) Beau Dean Riley Smith, Daniel Riley, Stephen Page, Leonard Mickelo, Waangenga Blanco and Kaine Sultan-Babij.

The Page cultural dynasty is about to take another leap forward as Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director Stephen Page prepares to show his first feature film.

It was Page’s actor-son Hunter Page-Lochard who ­encouraged him to adapt Bangarra’s Spear into a feature-length film, to premiere at the biennial Adelaide Film Festival in October.

Hunter featured in several films, including Bran Nue Dae and The Sapphires before his breakout lead role opposite Christina Ricci in Around The Block.

“He was always an avid film fan and he’s always saying, ‘Dad, you’ve got to get into film, you’d be great. That imagery on stage you could translate that to film’,” Page said. “So he was really a comfort on Spear.”

Page has collaborated on many films and directed his first short as part of the anthology film, The Turning. Spear is something different though, stemming from the Adelaide Film Festival’s HIVE fund that aims to cross-­pollinate Australian arts with film. Windmill Theatre Company’s Rosemary Myers will also premiere her feature Girl Asleep at the festival.

Festival director Amanda ­Duthie had told him the film “not only ticked the box but it grabbed the heart of what the initiative is: performing arts groups working with film practitioners’’.

Page said he was still baffled when trying to describe the film, as it took a 37-minute contemporary dance piece out of the theatre and into the world, from the bush to urban Sydney.

“It’s just a new form, not even new, it’s a hybrid,” he said.

Producer Robert Connolly wanted to extend “the spirit I work within theatre to come over to film’’.

Page did that by ensuring he worked with many of his stage collaborators at his acclaimed dance company, including his dancers.

“It was a great challenge,” Page said, “but at the same time very ­rewarding seeing what you could do in the live theatre aesthetic and take care of that and respect that while moving it into the new film space.”

Other Australian features to premiere at Adelaide include the Adelaide-made dramedy feature A Month of Sundays, starring ­Anthony LaPaglia, Justine Clarke and John Clarke, and directed by Matt Saville; the Sundance Film Festival hit by local Matthew Bate, Sam Klemke’s Time ­Machine; and a new feature documentary about stringed instruments, Highly Strung, by Shine’s Scott Hicks.