Bangarra’s Dark Emu is a response to Bruce Pascoe’s book of the same name. But it doesn’t embrace the full potential of its source’s game-changing impact.
Australia’s romantic attitude to farming has done untold damage to the land.
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The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.
Ngathu, in Bangarra’s Ones Country, is a brilliant combination of the contemporary and traditional, telling the story of the ngathu, or cycad, in Arnhem Land.
Photo by Daniel Boud
Bangarra’s current season of three new works, Ones Country, is uneven in parts but worth seeing for the diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices.
Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney