In Bangarra's Ones Country, new voices show the many faces of Indigenous Australia
But I also had a vague feeling I’d seen it all before. There is some excellent imagery and dancing here: standouts for me were relative newcomer Yolanda Lowatta in a solo, “Rebirth Ritual,” and Beau Dean Riley Smith’s punching, energetic spear dance. How do you turn such a monumental work of scholarship into dance? The performance is divided into 14 sections, including “Bogong Moth Harvest”, “Whales of Fortune” and “Baiame” – the Emu creator spirit. The reverberations of Pascoe’s book work in two directions: one, back in time to correct the historical record the other forward, into our future, to command us to learn from traditional knowledges of country in order to avoid catastrophic climate and land mismanagement in Australia. The hunter-gatherer myth they had adopted was only a convenient and insidious lie. Working from records of early settlers, Pascoe showed that even the new colonists recognised the widespread food production and housing construction practices of the Aboriginal peoples. However, Dark Emu (the book) offers a much more important lesson.
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