“Bangarra Dance Theatre is one of the youngest and the oldest of Australia’s dance companies. It’s living tradition goes back at least 40,000 years …and has stunned audiences throughout Australia and the world with electric, startling and inherently spiritual dance works of immense theatrical presence …’

‘Dance Theatre’ is well termed. Bangarra is a seamless blending of the powers of ancestry, movement, music, set design, costume, lighting etc which presents a spectacle that is greater than all its parts, and in which none of the parts takes precedence. An image embedded in my mind from Bangarra’s Walkabout 2002  is that of a slim, young indigenous girl on an empty stage, save for the filthy mattress on which her body contorts as she goes through the wretchedness of a dirty shot. The gleaming tip of a giant syringe is suspended metres above her agonised body as if waiting to impale her. It is one of the most powerful ‘snapshots’ I have ever seen - any medium, any time, any culture. Having had this memorable experience of Bangarra’s work previously, I was very excited to see Clan.

Frances Ring’s contribution to Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Double Bill Clan is Unaipon, an abstract piece which conjures the life of one of Australia’s most wonderful and relatively unknown inventors and philosophers – David Unaipon  (pronounced You-nigh-poon). His image graces our $50 notes. Nowadays people of indigenous heritage studying western classics and vice versa is not too unusual. Unaipon’s acquiring of knowledge (1872 – 1967) was far more unique in circumstance. His education began in his tribal culture of the Ngarrindjeri (renowned for its peoples' weaving skill) and continued on a mission station (Raukkan, Point McLeay, SA) where traditional culture and western school books began to merge in influence. Later, life would place him as the precocious ‘son’ in the Adelaide household of CB Young where he received a classical education. ‘He was taught everything from literature through to how to play Bach on the organ and how to speak Latin and Greek ... (and) studied all the great philosophies and cultures in the world'. His was a unique educational life journey of theoretical and classical comparisons, parallels and contrasts to which most of us could never dream. Unaipon genuinely walked between many worlds.

The mandatory nature of study in our schools can sometimes wipe away a little of learning's gold dust, like cribbing Romeo and Juliet for the HSC. If you had the good fortune of discovering this text for yourself when you were falling in love for the first time - while actually experiencing the violent urgency of teenage love - in later life you never cease to marvel that a middle-aged historic playwright could have got it so right. Unaipon experienced this wonder continually. He loved and was excited by knowledge and those people capable of its communication. *He joined them. Choreographer and artistic director Frances Ring injects into Unaipon David Unaipon’s sparkling spirit .

The second part of Clan’s bill is Reflections, elements taken from past works of award-winning artistic director and choreographer Stephen Page. “Excerpts from milestone works such as Ochres, Fish and Skin are woven together into one sensual and emotive theatrical experience.”

You’ll find yourself slipping out of one piece of liquid poetry and into the next. Not a lot of things in cultural recreation come better.

* David Unaipon’s Contributions
• Legendary Tales of The Australian Aborigines by David Unaipon, Melbourne University Press 2001.
• “Unaipon(‘s) handwritten patent diagram of his modified handpiece for shearing … was originally patented in 1909 ... Between 1909 and 1944, Unaipon made patent applications for nine other inventions, including  a centrifugal motor and a mechanical propulsion device … many of his ideas were picked up and improved by other scientists … and are still in use today.”  (From David Unaipon by Melissa Jackson, Indigenous Services Librarian, State Library NSW.)
• David Unaipon believed the greatest books he ever read were Isaac Newton’s Laws of Physics and the Bible.  

The Double Bill CLAN: Unaipon and Reflections Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre 25 June – 17 July

Image courtesy of Bangarra Dance Theatre