Frances Rings joined the contemporary Indigenous dance company in 1993 and, after nearly three decades, will take the helm as the company’s first Indigenous woman artistic director later this year.
"All of that spectrum of experiences are rich and powerful; I don't know any other company that could do that," she says.
"Part of my passion is to see that [Indigenous] stories are given a platform. That we use our opportunity here at Bangarra as storytellers to be able to take those stories and put them out there in the mainstream, in the public consciousness, and be able to transform how people look at us and view us and understand us," she says.In 2012, Rings choreographed her first full-length work for Bangarra: Terrain.
"I think we understand that going through something like the bushfires and floods and the cycle of deluge, of destruction, of creation — this country's ability to rebirth and regenerate is quite powerful." Deborah Brown won a Helpmann for her 2012 performance and was recently invited to work with dancers during rehearsals.
"There's a lot of not only incredible cultural information, but fascinating geographical and wildlife information as well, that is rich and inspiring and enduring.""It's important to be able to be taken out onto Country, be told the creation stories while you are on Country, to understand how important those living systems are," Rings says.
"I went away and I thought about it, because I was looking at it from his perspective, his family, his mob. And I had to turn it around and look at it from us as Bangarra mob that live an urban existence here," she says. Staging two of Rings's shows in the same year has the added benefit of soft-launching her as artistic director.
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