The Light Inside

★★★★ ½ "a feast of cultural richness and groundbreaking innovation. It’s one of the best things on Australian dance stages this year."

Come explore the cultural forces that bind us together, across oceans and eons. 

From two of the world’s great First Nations comes a new work: The Light Inside. Some call it a feeling, some call it the mother spirit. It’s the place where sea meets sky, the horizon we all look to, the compass that guides us home.

In Bangarra’s first mainstage cross-cultural collaboration, leading Māori choreographer and Arts Laureate Moss Te Ururangi Patterson joins beloved Bangarra alumna Deborah Brown. Together they guide Bangarra’s award-winning ensemble in stories that honour their mother countries and the spirit that calls them home.

Brown is a proud descendent of the Wakaid Clan and Meriam people in the Torres Strait, and has heritage from far across the seas in Scotland. She carries strength and resilience from her ancestors. Patterson, born near Lake Taupō, is a proud mokopuna (grandson) of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribe, and describes his sense of home as something alive, a fire inside, that he carries like a beating heart.

Experience the resilience of the First Peoples of the Oceania region, that extends across the continent now known as Australia, the Torres Strait Islands and Aotearoa, our southern neighbour.

Photography credit: Daniel Boud.

★★★★★ "bold, transcendent, visceral, divine and poignant."

REVIEWS

★★★★ "a rich, layered production that stays with the viewer long after curtain call."
- ArtsHub

"a fresh, exciting and invigorating performance."
- South Sydney Herald

"Patterson excels in his group choreography, as pulsing organic masses move amoebic-like...the choreography is by end mesmerising and unceasing."
- Stage Whispers 

"Aural and visual riches are in abundant supply."
- The Australian