Sydney dance theatre company Bangarra is bringing a brand new production to the stage next week.
Yuldea is the first production by Wirangu/Mirning woman Frances Rings since she took over the role of Artistic Director after creative icon Stephen Page stepped down from the role last year.
Yuldea explores the moment traditional life collided with the growing Australian nation through the stories of the Anangu people of the Great Victorian Desert.
The production covers the construction of the Transcontinental Railway and the atomic testing at Maralinga which forced the Anangu people to flee their desert homelands where they had lived for millenia.
Daniel Mateo is one of the dancers in the production and says the story highlights how the Anangu people have survived and held close to their knowledge and ways of knowing.
“It’s something special for Indigenous people because we have an oral history telling. We speak, and that’s how we pass knowledge.
Instead of keeping it to close kinship we are opening it to a wider audience. We’re opening it to people who might not know much about Indigenous culture.
So for Yuldea especially it’s highlighting the knowledge we have with the songlines in the sky and the land and how it’s been disrupted but how we as people and a culture have kept the knowing safe.”
The production features songs by multi-award winning electronic pop duo Electric Fields and premiers on the 14th of June in Sydney.
