Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Yuldea will play at The Art House at Wyong in March as part of a NSW regional tour following its record-breaking debut season.
Australia’s leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performing arts company, Bangarra brings Frances Rings’ powerful production to life with costumes from multi-award-winning Jennifer Irwin, lighting by Karen Norris and set design by Elizabeth Gadsby.
Yuldea features original music composed by David Page Music Fellow Leon Rodgers, a descendant of the Worimi nation in NSW.
It also features multi-award-winning duo Electric Fields as guest composers.
Frances Rings’ first work as Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre is a deeply personal ceremonial affirmation of history and heritage, inspired by her family’s connection to the area.
Yuldea awakens the earth and sky worlds to tell the story of the Aṉangu people of the Great Victorian Desert.
It explores the abrupt moment that traditional life collided with the industrial ambition of a growing nation in South Australia’s Yuldea (Ooldea).
In Yuldea, the ancient water soak Yooldil Kapi connected important trading routes and dreaming stories that crossed through the site for thousands of years.
Yooldil Kapi was instrumental in the construction of the Trans-Australian railway extending across the Nullarbor, joining the east coast to the west coast in 1917.
As a result of the industrial pressures placed on the permanent waterhole, the water quickly ran dry.
Now memories lay scattered, like the Aṉangu people, displaced from their home.
Remnants of colonial progress are swallowed by sand.
But the Aṉangu endure, determined to keep strong their knowledge systems of land and sky, honouring their eternal bonds of kinship between people and place.
“Within my family lineage lies the stories of forefathers and mothers who lived a dynamic, sophisticated desert life, leaving their imprint scattered throughout Country like memories suspended in time,” Rings said.
“Their lives were forever changed by the impact of colonial progress.
“The story of Yuldea asks us to look beyond the narrative of our nation’s modernisation to reconcile a fraught history, and to affirm a future that no longer hides behind its truths but grows because of them.”
Yuldea will be performed at The Art House on March 1 and 2.
Session details and bookings are available on the theatre’s website