This August, Australia’s leading Indigenous performing arts company, Bangarra Dance Theatre, will present the Queensland premiere of their first-ever visual arts collaboration, Illume, an exciting new presentation from Mirning woman and Bangarra Artistic Director, Frances Rings and Goolarrgon Bard visual artist, Darrell Sibosado.
The stunning production is set to captivate audiences in Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s (QPAC’s) Playhouse from 1 to 9 August 2025 as part of QPAC’s signature Clancestry festival celebrating First Nations art and culture.
Rings said that the Clancestry festival at QPAC was one of the highlights of the year for Bangarra.
“We are thrilled to be included in the program again and look forward to sharing Illume with Queensland audiences, celebrating First Nations arts, story and culture,” she says.
Inspired by Sibosado’s Bard-Bardi Jawi Country on the north-western coast of Western Australia, Illume draws together music, visual arts and dance to explore the ways light has captivated and sustained Indigenous cultural existence for millennia.
Rings and Sibosado’s collaboration delves into artificial light pollution and its disruption to land and sky, devastating First Nations people’s connections to sky country and limiting their ability to share celestial knowledge and skylore. Illume explores the awe of light, a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. It charts the impacts of light pollution in a climate emergency.
“This collaboration uses both choreographic and visual art perspectives in a unique approach that conveys complex themes about light, culture, and environmental issues,” Rings says.
“I hope that by intersecting our artistic practices, we potentially create something more innovative and impactful that honours our First Nations cultural storytelling.”
Sibosado says, “I’m very excited and honoured to be working with Frances and Bangarra. I first met Frances in about 1988 when we were both students at NAISDA College. I have watched her focus, commit and grow into the artist creator she is today, and I have always been intrigued by her movement style and the composition of her work.
“My work is steeped in the context of where I’m from. I am enjoying the process of seeing how our different practices respond, merge and translate to express the rhythm and essence of my people and my country.”
Working alongside Sibosado to bring his designs to the Bangarra stage, will be set designer Charles Davis, costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby, lighting designer Damien Cooper, Wiradjuri/Gamilaroi man and composer Brendon Boney, cultural consultant Trevor Sampi, a Bardi Jawi man from Lombadina and Craig Wilkinson, AV designer.
The much-anticipated season of Illume opens at QPAC from 1 to 9 August within Bangarra’s national tour, and as part of QPAC’s 2025 Clancestry festival.
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