PEOPLE, LAND, AND SPIRIT
Recently landed: People, Land, and Spirit
Gracia’s written response to Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Sheltering, especially for Fjord Review.
Subscribe to and support Fjord Review.
Sheltering, Bangarra Dance Theatre’s new triple bill, having opened in Canberra on Ngunnawal Country, is on its national tour, and much like the definition to ‘take shelter,’ the choreographers and the dancers ask the audience to actively look at from whom and what a community or an individual might need to take shelter. To me, this questioning is what lies at the core of Sheltering: from what, from whom, and further to that, what will you do with this awareness? Beneath the mantle of three stories of Country, one message of hope, Bangarra inspires activation in all her forms.
Told in three sections Place, Body, and Spirit, Frances Rings’s Sheoak is a lesson still to be learned, as relevant now as it was when it debuted in 2015. Like the endangered Sheoak tree, endemic to Australia, and much of our flora and fauna, “Indigenous languages, customs, and lore [are also under] threat”[i]. And so, this work is both about the Sheoak tree, whose green branchlets of scales (leaves) resemble the feathers of the Cassowary (hence belonging to the family Casaurinaceae), and the role the grandmother tree plays. “The Sheoak, like the grandmother, has a role in family and community life that is about protection, the wisdom of elders, life’s journey and the spirit of survival. Children were often left under the protective bough of the Sheaok while parents gathered food. Since ancient times, the Sheoak tree has provided Aboriginal people with wood for weapons, tools and even canoes and the branches were used for windbreaks and shelters.”[ii] Choreographed by Mirning woman, Rings, with music by Munaldjali and Nunukul man and renowned composer David “Dubbo” Page, whose legacy resides “in the heartbeat of Bangarra’s storytelling”[iii], the Sheoak tree is symbolic; the roots of the Sheoak are the past; the trunk, the present; and the branches, the future.
[i] Frances Rings, Bangarra Dance Theatre: Knowledge Ground, https://bangarra-knowledgeground.com.au/productions/lore/frances-rings-on-sheoak-lore, accessed 20th June, 2026.
[ii] ‘Lore: Dance Stories of Land and Sea’, Bangarra Dance Theatre: Teachers’ Resource, 2015 https://d3ihitrw16qgsp.cloudfront.net/uploads/resources/LORE-Study-Guide.pdf, accessed 20th June, 2026.
[iii] ‘Roy Davidson ‘Dubbo’ Page (1961–2016)’, Bangarra Dance Theatre Sheltering printed program, 2026, pp. 14–15.
●
6th of July, 2026
