In the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, expectations were high for Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Horizon, a double bill featuring works by Saybaylag (Saibai Island people) of Zenadth Kez (the Torres Strait) man Sani Townson and Deborah Brown of the Wakaid clan, Meriam (Murray Island), who were in collaboration with Māori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa). This is a significant achievement for Artistic Director Francis Rings, for it marks Bangarra’s first international commission.

The curtain opened on a sculptural mass, a dark silhouette like a triumphal monument. Kassidy Waters was held aloft by five male dancers as a celestial entity in what I recognised as the opening gambit of Sani Townson’s Kulka (Bloodline), which premièred as part of Bangarra’s Dance Clan in 2023. The work had been significantly embellished for the Horizon season, with the inclusion of a mirrored ceiling designed by Elizabeth Gadsby, suspended at a gradient, capturing and packaging the movement on stage. The previously unadorned setting imbued the work with an expansiveness, despite the compact size of the Drama Theatre. However, the mirror enhanced the temporal and spiritual dimension, as it also captured floor projections of totems, geometric patterns, and dancer Phil Walford as ancestor spirit. The reflection enabled everyone in the house to appreciate the floor patterns unfolding in full kaleidoscopic brilliance.

Kassidy Waters and Kiarn Doyle in Kulka (photograph by Daniel Boud)

As an alumna of the college from which the company was spawned in NAISDA and having been a member of the company in the past, watching Sani Townson’s work Kulka felt like coming home. I recognised the modernist architecture of Townson’s complex partnering sequences, which were inherited from former Martha Graham teacher Paul Saliba. Saliba’s partnering signature was expanded by former Bangarra artistic director Stephen Page. Francis Rings, along with Stephen’s brother Russell, as Stephen’s muses, consolidated the Bangarra aesthetic, of which Townson is very much a proponent.

I have been following Townson’s career across many performative platforms and disciplines. As a former collaborator with the Gondwana Voices and the Sydney Children’s Choir and as a visible part of the Sydney LGBTQI+ Ballroom Scene, I am surprised by Townson’s ability to compartmentalise each aspect of his creative endeavours; I always expect more cross-fertilization. What must be acknowledged is Townson’s refusal to make works overly laden with Indigenous tropes to legitimise his authenticity as an Indigenous artist. However, the Torres Strait Islander nautical references are evident in the arm gestures, in the rhythmic quality filled with sharp, punctuated sequences, including the quick shifts from the centre of gravity, from high and lofty to ‘hips down’ almost crouching positions and back to standing tall at ‘mark time’ height.

Townson’s Kulka was an affirmation of identity, of kin and kinship. If Townson was West African he would be called a griot, a storyteller in charge of holding genealogies and tradition.

A highlight of this frenetic work was a section called Koedalaw Awgadh (Crocodile God), which paid homage to Townson’s totem. The trio featuring Lucy May, Bradley Smith, and Kallum Goolagong traversed the stage as one. Together, the tightly bound trio embodied the instinctive volatility and power associated with the crocodile lurking beneath the water’s surface. It was then that the sheer bodysuits patterned with black stippling running down the centre of both the front and back of costume designer Clair Parker’s predominantly male costumes came into contextual clarity.

The second half of the Horizon bill, titled The Light Inside, was created by Deborah Brown and Moss Patterson. Despite being presented as one piece, it comprised two discrete works. Brown’s Salt Water and Patterson’s Fresh Water were intended as a celebration of their respective cultures. Patterson’s contribution felt more declarative, more urgent, and definitely more imposing, at times almost menacing. Both the Torres Strait Islander people and Māori are famed for their warrior prowess, but it was Patterson’s work which evoked a call to arms.

As with Townson’s work, Brown’s sequences were laden with gestural content alluding to life in the Torres Strait Islands, from the hands of male dancers emulating the holding and blowing of a conch shell, to the trio of women who appear as ships, their arms as sails, referencing the nautical history of the Torres Straits. Another danced trio featured Kiarn Doyle, James Boyd and Bradley Smith as a deep-sea diver who takes in air from a (mimed) contraption held to his mouth before plunging the depths to retrieve his bounty along the northern edges of the Great Barrier Reef.

Dancer Lillian Banks’s notably belated appearance on stage as an otherworldly force illustrated her indomitable presence within the company. Brown’s choreography perfectly enhanced Banks’s costume of imbricated silver slivers which prickled and sparkled with refracted light as she moved. Banks embodied the blue twinkling of a star.

After a rousing ensemble vignette titled Boundaries, reminiscent of the ‘company rice’ traditional dances, which are both uplifting and full of spectacle, Brown’s choreography culminated in a gathering of the ensemble which felt like an homage to ‘the coming of the light’, a celebration dedicated to the period when Christian missionaries came to the Islands.

Moss Patterson’s choreographic presence was unapologetically announced with the introduction of a series of battle cries. Used as a device to maintain unison, the verbal sounds made by the dancers gained volume with the increasingly staccato dynamics of the dance.

Kallum Goolagong, cutting a fierce presence, stood out among the male performers. The fact that he was utilised in the rhythmic sections by all three choreographers was a testament to the sheer dynamism he exudes. Lillian Banks was showcased as Hokioi, the spiritual hawk and warrior in Te Ūrunga (The Arrival), heading the ensemble in yet another unrelenting dance symbolic of Indigenous women traversing time and space, leading a way forward into the future. This section, and much of Patterson’s dance, left me in awe, wanting more while simultaneously exhausted.

Horizon represents an unapologetic proclamation of identity and visibility. It is an embodied commitment to fighting against forces compelling Indigenous peoples to be quiet and to fade away. Perhaps that’s why there was an overall lack of stillness within the works – there is still so much to be done.

Horizon (Bangarra Dance Theatre) continues at the Sydney Opera House until 13 July 2024 before touring nationally. Performance attended: June 13.