Illume
Bangarra Dance Theatre
Joan Sutherland Theatre
June 4-14, 2025
Glowing, dynamic, mysterious and completely 21st century, Illume gives tangibility through music, dance and imagery to the allusive connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. Co-created by Frances Rings, Bangarra’s Artistic Director, and Goolarrgon Bard visual artist Darrell Sibosado, this ingenious new work draws on the importance of the iridescent mother of pearl to Goolarrgon Bard people but at the same time is firmly in contemporary space.
Confronted with the night sky, its multiplicity of lights in infinite dark space, who is not moved by its grandeur and mysteriousness and prompted to think of our own human vulnerability? On stage, beyond the gauzy scrim shadowy figures emerge from the darkness, gradually taking form as light defines them and a familiar yet unique story of creation, destruction and the hope of renewal begins.
Unique because Sibosado comes from Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula, where the harvesting and engraving of mother of pearl shells – a symbol of light – for ritual purposes was a cultural practice for millennia. Recently, Sibosado’s artistic practice has focussed on transforming shell designs into light sculptures, which became the inspiration for set designer Charles Davis’s intriguing backdrop and light patterns projected onto the dark gleaming surface of the stage. The patterning is often strikingly highlighted in Elizabeth Gadsby’s imaginative costume designs.
The geometric patterns, zigzags and mazes characteristic of the riji passed on ancestral knowledge of land, sea and cultural identity, are translated into form and movement by the dancers and supported by Brendon Boney’s score. A highlight of Illume is the brilliantly conceived and executed performance of light as the vital force that sets a kinship group in motion, the dancers weaving long glowing flexible tubes into a complex network of lineage and connection. The elevation of the woven form by a single and compelling dancer at its centre permits the individual a personal journey within its dynamic orbit.
There is a forewarning of disaster as dancers eddy and thunder crashes, and their rhythmic way of life is violently shattered by colonialism. Rather than be summoned into light by the glowing trumpet shell, the fearful dancers are thrust into a dismal darkness where light becomes a torment and their connection to land broken. Costumed in oppressive red and black, the dancers lug heavy boxes unwillingly constructing a burdensome church, the boxes becoming stools for uncomprehending children, their little hands slapped for not listening.
Yet there is hope of healing visualised through the gentle fall of ashes, the still shimmering presence of the past and the call of the present to us all to protect Country. A timely and dazzling choreographic lesson gracefully and powerfully given by Rings and her eighteen dedicated dancers, Illume illuminates the path forward.
