Cirrus@Austlit

'First Bruce Pascoe spent years researching. The came Dark Emu, the book, published by Magabala, meticulously detailing from multiple sources the myriad ways Aboriginal people lived before Invasion and busting the simplistic hunter-gatherer and peaceful colonisation myths.'

'Bangarra Dance Theatre has been Australia’s premier Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance company for nearly thirty years. Although the company includes dancers from every language grouping, it collaborates with specific traditional owners, depending on the particular works they are creating. This attention to specificity is an important part of Bangarra’s recognition of the different groupings across the Australian mainland and islands, and the islands of the Torres Strait. Led by Artistic Director Stephen Page, Bangarra draws on techniques that include traditional Indigenous dance as well as contemporary world techniques. The company’s works include Praying Mantis Dreaming, Ochres, Skin, Corroboree, Unaipon, CLAN, Mathinna, and Bennelong.' (Introduction)

'His mother called it “whispering language”. She would whisper the words of their freshwater people to her children at night, because it was part of a forbidden culture. When the welfare people came, she hid these children beneath a stockman’s house. Storytelling would be the family gift passed on to these kids, and Roy Page, the youngest of eight, told tales that inspired three of his own sons to become famous performers and storytellers.' (Introduction)

'Lights come up on an orb receding back in space, an echo perhaps taking us back in time, or into the cosmos, into the dreaming to the Emu in the Sky. Dancers, in groupings of three or five, move stage right to left, undulating up from the ground and wavering like kangaroo grass.' (Introduction)