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DATES & VENUES 7, 8, 9 March, 2002 at 8pm
Adelaide Festival Theatre
For prices and bookings please visit Adelaide Festival website Or phone Bass Ticketing
(when calling from Adelaide) 13 12 46
(when calling from regional SA or interstate) 08 8400 2250 back to top 
| ABOUT SKIN As you enter the theatre for Skin, you are entering a timeless sacred space. Barely visible in low lighting, a woman and a boy are ready to start unfolding a story. The image is stylised to indicate a point on a journey between two worlds. This is the mother heart that leads to the bonding spirit of the women in Shelter which, in turn, lays the foundation for the men of Spear to survive. |  |
 | Shelter - inspired by the ravishing works of the late Aboriginal artist, Emily Kame Kngwarrye, Shelter draws on the cultural practices of the women of Australia's Central Desert and Utopia regions, to create images of extraordinary beauty. It is an abstract portrayal of the traditional hunting and gathering process, inspired by living off the land. It begins with the women hunting small animals, gathering berries and bush medicines, using the digging sticks to get nutritional roots from the ground. Mothers and daughters live off the land. A daughter conceives a spirit through the land, and a birthing sequence follows her progress through to the grief of a stillbirth and the cleansing of the spirit that follows. |
The modern world invades their lives through mining projects that bring toxic pollution to their desert homeland. Shelter shows how the spirit overcomes this new kind of invasion, a chemical invasion. Spear marks the first-time collaboration with Bangarra of award-winning Indigenous songwriter and performer, Archie Roach.  Spear explores the problems Aboriginal men face in urban and remote communities, starting in childhood. Spiritual forces are represented by an elder spirit from a traditional homeland, an urban spirit who has worked through so much that he is cleansed by his own efforts, and a new spirit in the body of a child.
Interlaced with jokes, yarns and songs, a series of social concerns and issues is addressed. The first is Aboriginal deaths in custody, followed by an initiation ceremony for a young man being given his totem. Then the destructive influences of alcohol and petrol sniffing are tackled. Finally, a male ceremony led by the elder spirit cleanses the effects of these modern influences and the new spirit of the child offers hope for the future. Skin was commissioned by SOCOG and the Brisbane Festival with assistance by the Australia Council through the Commonwealth Government's Major Festivals Initiative for presentation at the 2000 Sydney Olympics Arts Festival and the Brisbane Festival 2000. It has since won artistic director, Stephen Page and Bangarra, the coveted Helpmann award for Best New Australian Work and Best Dance Work in 2000. back to top DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Commentary by Stephen Page My first inspiration was family kinship. I have seen how remote traditional families live. I have watched urban Aboriginal families live. I have watched my professional family - Bangarra - live. And my immediate family. I have been inspired by the traditional family kinship - about the way it respects the gender of men and women. I have always believed the Dreaming is led and seeded by mother earth and that the male energy is the son of mother earth - that the spirit in mother earth is what makes the male energy. That's why I felt with Shelter that we put down the foundation of the spirit - that it's seeded by the mother earth, which then allows a sense of protection and security for the Spear to go on its journey, to walk through the fire and come out the other end knowing that the spirit of mother will always be there. I think this comes from my sisters, from watching my child with his mother. It's from inspirations of Emily Kngwarreye's paintings, to contemporary heroes of today like Banduk Marika, Fiona Foley, Tracey Moffatt, Frances Rings - to the myriad of Aboriginal women, urban and traditional, who have influenced my life. For Skin, I went back to kinship and family and said, I want to respect both genders. I want to lay down the foundation of the spirit - and of black communication. I think that is what keeps kinship together: the constant story telling, whether you are passing on to children or giving direction and elder advice to your peers. We have to wear many survival totems. We have to have tough goanna skins so that we can survive and evolve through this next century. Skin is about the complexities of our kinship: about accepting and respecting it - and that it is still alive. back to top
THE SKIN TEAM (2002) Skin Creative Team
Director/Choreographer - Stephen Page
Score - David Page & Steve Francis
Songs - Archie Roach
Dramaturg - John Harding
Set Design - Peter England
Costume Design - Jennifer Irwin
Lighting Design - Karen Norris
Assistant Artistic Director - Jasmine Gulash Skin Performers
Guest Performers - Hunter Page-Lochard, Archie Roach, Wayne Blair
Company Dancers
Skin Production Team
Production Manager - John Colvin
Stage Manager - Narelle Lewis
Head Mechanist - John Matkovic
Assistant Stage Manager - Ebony Williams
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SKIN CD | 
A double CD featuring the music from Skin and Corroboree can be purchased through Bangarra Dance Theatre. CDs of the music from Bush, Rites, Ochres, Fish and Walkabout can also be purchased. Please contact:
Bangarra Dance Theatre
bangarra@bangarra.com.au
ph: 612 9 251 5333
fax: 612 9 251 5266 |
back to top SPONSORS Bangarra Sponsors
Skin Sponsors
Sydney Organising Committee for the 2000 Olympics
2000 Brisbane Festival
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