Moving between blackfella traditions and the whitefella world. The performers of Sydney's Bangarra Dance Theatre have an intensity of stage presence, individually and collectively, that is probably equalled by few troupes anywhere in the world. This intensity is the driving force of the company's latest production, Skin , which is distinguished less by its choreography than by its power to create moods and make a political statement through a series of scenes and images. You would have to have a calcified heart and soul to be unmoved by the performance, but even a sympathetic spectator finds it hard to ignore the way Skin , through its refusal to seize opportunities to become a full-throttle dance work, keeps raising the question of whether it would have had even greater power if Stephen Page, the director and choreographer, had given the dancers more to work with.
Skin is divided into two parts.
Shelter is a ritualistic, sometimes puzzling but always fascinating group portrait of the life of Aboriginal women in the bush. Spear gives an anecdotal and more explicit account of the lives of partly urbanised men as they move between their blackfella traditions and the corrupting influences of the whitefella world. A small boy is one of the subtly employed aesthetic and emotional links between Shelter and Spear . His disappearance is part of the sense of loss imposed on the women, and his reappearance symbolises the hope that sometimes replaces despair in the men's lives. Another symbolic link between Skin 's two parts is the imagery of a womb.