This is the premise of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s new work HORIZON, a cross-cultural exchange between First Nations dance artists in New Zealand and Australia.
In an exclusive interview for MiNDFOOD, choreographer Deborah Brown discusses this inspiring moment for Bangarra and her work.
The show begins a season in Melbourne at the end of August, featuring Bangarra dancers and choreographed by two luminaries, Deborah Brown, who has Torres Strait ancestry, and Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, who has Māori ancestry.
The choreographers created two distinct pieces for the program, with the unifying theme of water – Patterson exploring the theme of fresh water; Brown exploring saltwater.
“The initial draw card for me to work on HORIZON,” Brown begins, “was [artistic director] Frances Rings calling me up, saying that she’d had an idea for cross-cultural collaboration with Moss, who she’d worked with in Aotearoa/New Zealand years ago…. I just knew it would be visionary.”
The work developed remotely over the course of last year, with Brown and Patterson meeting on Zoom from her home in Brisbane and his in Auckland, until it was time to get into the studio in Sydney to start staging the work with the dancers. As the collaboration progressed, Brown says, the synergies between her and Patterson’s work became clearer: “The more I watch the choreography now, the more I see that my work responds to heat and his work is heat,” she says. The two works also follow the course of their inspiration, water, “they flow into each other”, she says.
In fact, water has been a lifelong obsession for Brown, who staged The Wave in 2019, a solo created for former Australian Ballet dancer, Madeleine Eastoe.
“I’m inspired by the depths of the water, and the significance of navigation came up with Moss’s perspective, and Māori ancestry. For my people too in Torres Strait, we look to the stars and ocean tides,” she adds, “I would have not picked that when I first started,” demonstrating the surprises and joys of collaboration.
When asked what she felt had developed in her choreography from the collaboration, she said she had discovered more “sensuality” in her work more recently, leaning matriarchy, which was a key theme of the project.
“Connection with our mothers is a crucial part of Indigenous cultures,” she explains. “It has been explored in both mine and Moss’s work, the way water, like mothers, nurture and move tenderly.”
Brown also says the time she’s spent with her mother in Brisbane, since relocating from Sydney after the pandemic, has been deeply inspiring. “I’ve learned so much about my ancestry, which informs my choreography. It always flows back to the ocean,” she says.
Her ancestral culture is deeply connected with the ocean, she says, and perhaps this is where her deep interest in everything oceanic emanates from. “I love crashing headfirst into the waves,” she says. “Maybe one day I’ll take up surfing, maybe for my 50th,” she laughs, an unexpected pursuit for a choreographer.
What directions does Brown see her work going, after HORIZON?
“I wondered if I was becoming repetitive, because a lot of my work evokes the theme of the sea… but truthfully, I feel like I haven’t said enough about this theme yet… I’ve realised maybe I don’t need to say something brand new and different every time I choreograph… The same theme can tend to come up in your work and that’s good. Until I’ve explored the depths of water enough, I won’t move on.”
