At Middleback Arts Centre. I booked last week as I remembered that I was too preoccupied to go to anything at this time last year and just happened to get lucky. I hadn't been to a Bangarra performance before. Moderately full.
I read the brochure before going and so expected a strong narrative or at least an iconography that I could recognise. Notionally we're told a story of a soak in western South Australia that gets consumed by the steam locomotives transiting the Trans-Australian Railway in the 1920s or so. The final part takes us in a tacked-on way to the horrors of Maralinga.
As it was I struggled to find things to focus on with all the high-energy movement and I started to wonder what it looked like from different angles; I was in the middle perhaps 15 metres back from the front edge of the stage and felt I was looking down when I should have been looking across. There was a sense of the athleticism but not the danger that comes with circus. Many in the crowd dug it with a broad standing ovation.
Geraldine Higginson's review is somewhat tepid.
