Firestarter
Directors: Nell Minchin, Wayne Blair
Venue: State Theatre
January 15-16, 2021
The award-winning documentary Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra not only celebrates the impressive rise of the Bangarra Dance Theatre Company from humble beginnings to international fame but also documents its struggle for recognition and the personal anguish of its longtime prodigiously creative director, Stephen Page.
The documentary pays tribute to contribution of the original founders, Carole J. Johnson, Cheryl Stone and dancer, Rob Byrant, a Gumbayngirr man, who broke away from NAISDA to form Bangarra – Wiradjuri for “to make fire” – and appointed the 24-year-old performer Stephen as its creative director in 1991. He and his two brothers and fellow performers, Russell and David, became the creative heart of the company.
In turn, the Pages pay tribute to traditional dancer, Djakapurra Munyarryun from the Yirrkala community, testifying to his importance in the development of the Bangarra style – a fusion of traditional myths, music and song with the experience of urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Archival footage of early days is often amusing but always insightful. A cheeky Little Davey Page, who “had a singing career until his voice broke”, interacts with Paul Hogan and there are some riotous scenes from Bangarra’s inception when they toured schools playing multiple daily shows to provide revenue. Glimpses of interaction in the “chaotic” 14-member Page household and between the young Page brothers, often joking, usually satirical, highlights their similarities and their differences. Having lost culture, the three likely lads from Brisbane became the means of reclaiming culture for a nation through dance theatre and, as the documentary highlights, Bangarra clinched its success with an awe-inspiring performance at the 2000 Olympics.
Individually the brothers had remarkable gifts. Mesmerising footage of Russell Page in “Gudurrku” (Brolga, Corroboree, 2001) shows a dancer of extraordinarily compelling and frightening beauty. The use of his whole body, from fingertips to toes, his connection with both partner (a both fragile and strong Frances Rings), the earth and an unseen but interactive world, might be described as the definitive Bangarra style. Additionally, the soundtracks to Bangarra’s performances composed by David Page, shown hard at work in his studio, are similarly distinctive, including the use of Aboriginal languages, sounds from nature and “soundscapes” where a sense of the land is created through sound.
Insightfully, the documentary aligns Bangarra’s struggle for artistic freedom of expression with the story for Aboriginal struggle for recognition in Australia. Impressive overhead shots of the 1988 Bicentennial march across the Harbour Bridge to close-ups of Prime Minister Keating making his 1992 landmark speech in Redfern acknowledging white Australia’s historical crimes against the Aborigines, encourage hope for restorative justice only to be crushed by a shot of Prime Minister Howard as he backtracks.
And so, at the height of its success, Bangarra is devastated by a double tragedy. While crass questions are best left to interviewer Andrew Denton, many are likely to see Stephen Page’s next and very successful work Bennelong – based on the story of Aboriginal man who tried to reconcile two contesting cultural perspectives – to show the extent to which Page was shaken by the suicide of first Russell and then David.
This well-balanced and insightful documentary does not disguise the anguish of the past, the complications and tensions of the present but at the same time, it holds out hope for the future. We see a more relaxed Stephen Page with his granddaughter, a new young dancer Kallum Goolagong speaking in language and confident, it seems, of his place, and Bangarra will continue to inspire.
A shortened version of Firestarter will feature on the ABC in the coming week, and the full version will be in cinemas in February 2021.
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