| OCHRES
Commentary by Artistic Director and choreographer, Stephen Page - August 2003 "Bangarra takes the audience on a journey with us and as I have said many times before it is important for us not to spoon feed our audience - we want them to bring their own dreaming to our shows, everyone has their own emotional reaction. It is the same with students studying our work, their own interpretations are just as important and valid as anything I can tell you about specific moves and their 'meaning'- we plant the seed but the work has its own life in people's spirits after that. Ochres was a collaborative work between myself, Djakapurra and Bernadette Walong - we all worked together, although with some sections one of us would be more involved, like Bernadette was with Yellow and the Obsession section in Red. Either way, we all brought our own stories and inspirations to the work - so I may have a very different idea of 'intent' and 'meaning' than Djakapurra or Bernadette - I think that difference is something to be celebrated.  Paint Up
In the first section, the introduction, Djakapurra sprinkles yellow ochre from a bark dish or coolum. Basically he is cleansing the land before we dance on it. It is quite a universal Aboriginal custom to welcome the story to land, he welcomes by way of this ritual paint up. The use of ochre is much more detailed in actual ceremonial practice but in this contemporary context, for use in the public domain, we use the one ochre colour - yellow. Djakapurra belongs to the Yirritja moiety (there are two moieties in Arnhem Land - Dhuwa and Yirritja) and Yirritja's colour is yellow - their base colour, their mother colour, their clay colour. So in the paint up Djakapurra cleanses himself first and with that protection he is able to cleanse the land for the journey and the story to begin. YELLOW
This is female spirit - mother earth in all her forms as represented by the women and the yellow ochre. The land is female in a lot of Indigenous cultures. Yellow is a bit like the traditional creation stories - the women dance the landmarks into creation, they give birth to waterholes and sacred sites. The creation stories are from up Djakapurra's way but here they are in presented in an abstract contemporary way. Another layer throughout Ochres is the music - for example in Yellow, we were able to work in consultation with the stories of the Tjipari Dreaming and the Etanyanu people for the soundscape. That soundscape taps into another essence of women's clan stories to add to Djakapurra's stories. 
A lot of the movements in Yellow are inspired by female energy and their connection to the land - the nurturing of children, feeding, gathering, water, bathing, birthing. The hand to mouth action is taking the sacred water to drink, to nurture, to cleanse. The cradling of the baby - their bodies become the basket, the cradle, the coolum to the child. Women's mourning, wailing, funeral rituals. The beating on their thighs - this comes from traditional dance, beating their laps to sustain rhythms to accompany the dance, it represents the heart beat of the land. In a lot of Bangarra's work you will see the 'broken' foot or leg, where the foot is flexed and the knee is bent. Its just us breaking all those classical ballet boundaries, we are more attracted to the animalistic, the earthbound so we 'break' all the extremities. BLACK
Male energy. It starts with Djakapurra wiping the 'ochre' across his forehead, a movement that is repeated throughout Black. It is a protective action, to protect and maintain the male spirit before they go on the hunt. The Stick dance is a war dance. It's about cultural machismo, men competing for certain sacred hunting grounds. It's more than just wanting to provide his clan with the best food it is also the spiritual protection of landmark, men compete to have the right to be caretakers of specific landmarks and knowledge. A lot of Black is a cut and paste of animal mimicry which is integral to traditional dance and we have stylised. Like the pointing of fingers either side of the body or with the palms forward and the 'flapping' of knees is mimicking the butterfly. The swatting movement with the hands, like the swatting of flies, the crouching and rearing up, the shaking of the body - that is kangaroo. Other movements you'll see is the hand 'cuffing', the hand is held semi cupped and swiped from side to side or held in front of the face - it is a very common signature in a lot of North East Arnhem Land dancing styles. It is a motif that appears in a lot of their spirit dances like the Nganuk or Mimi spirit dances.
The clapping hands on thighs while sitting down is very much like it is in the section Yellow - an accompanying rhythm, clapping heartbeat to support the energy of a solo dancer or to create a unified energy. The rubbing of the hands together up and down in front of the body is a stylised reference to the creation of fire, the spinning of the firestick in between the hands to create flame. In Black we also have the hands covering mouths - that was really a political statement about petrol sniffing, an abstract move we included to comment on the social dilemma that is an ongoing issue in a lot of communities. The section of Black that looks like a traditional stamping dance with hands either side of the head and the elbows pointing out - that is the Buffalo dance. It's a mimic/play dance about the introduction of the buffalos to the land. It really comes from the kids mimicking the buffalo - the ears and the horns. The 'picked up' feet movement is very common throughout Arnhem Land and a lot of Aboriginal dance. Its a sense of picking up the earth, you ritually piston the movement on the spot, sometimes it travels, the relationship of the sole of the foot to the earth, connecting to land. The repetition also builds up the body energy to start a dance - it is often used as a connecting movement or a travelling step. RED
Red is more about contemporary social issues. Youth is about rural kids, brought up in their own backyards and it is a mixture of Torres Strait and Aboriginal culture. They don't have schools and toys - they live and play from the land.  Obsession - the energies between male and female, sexuality, power and how these relationships have changed from traditional custom days. It is about struggle and attraction. Poison uses an abstract interpretation of the kinship system as its base. In the relationship between clans you have people who are your 'poison cousins'. Poison cousins have certain body gestures that have to be observed when they greet each other - one is that they can't look each other in the eye and when they shake hands they put one hand behind their backs, or when they embrace they hold onto one arm. These are customs that they do before they enter the space of that person. Pain - The way women and men nurse each other when they know that death is on the horizon. Its about caring for each other. The shirt over the head is like a shroud, it's a pretty universal ritual. In the soundscape Djakapurra is talking about accepting death as part of the cycle and that the spirit has to move on. He is saying he is in pain and the spirit needs to be free. He is letting her know that she has to keep cleansing him until he is out of pain. WHITE
In White it is as if we have taken all those inspirations from what has come before and used them to create this new world - the spirit world, in white man's words it would be 'heaven' - and so the movement is all very abstract. They are spirits so their extremities can be distorted, they could flick and wave and move strangely. There is a male duet in White that really is a celebration of Torres Strait movement and uses a traditional Torres Strait Island jump - leaving from two feet but landing with one foot following the other. A lot of the Torres Strait movements are derived from mimicking sea creatures like the turtle or, for example, their arm angles might represent the fins of sharks. There is another male solo in White that was inspired by the flying fox. In White every time they ensemble they are really paying respect to the spirit land - they come together, they bring their energies together. It is like taking time out, like the minutes silence for respect of death, it's the moment of silence in which nature is reborn. At the end of White Djakapurra stomps the ground back. In the beginning he awakens the land, at the end he settles it, he sings the cleansing song to let the land go to sleep. His dance is also a celebration of his connection to the land, almost like a thank you, a gift, he acknowledges its power." Stephen Page back to top
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