The land and nature are essential to Aboriginal life, used for tools, medicine and food but also providing an internal strength and sense of spiritual awakening. Environmental features such as scar trees, sacred sites and waterholes represent the connection to ancestors and Elders, and are a birthright of the Eora people.

Bangarra’s Artistic Director Stephen Page and Head Designer Jacob Nash looked back at NSW’s history and how the Eora hunted and gathered their food sources, with many of these animals and plants still in existence today. Wararda (waratah), Damun (Port Jackson fig tree), Wadanga l(wattle), Gulgadya (spear grass tree), Garawai (white cockatoo), Wirriga (goanna) and Guganagayin (kookaburra) were all utilized in daily life, from kookaburra and cockatoo feathers for ceremonies, wattle timber for firewood and tool-making and fruit of the fig tree for sustenance.

Animation and digital technology are employed to project some of our state’s most compelling flora and fauna directly onto the ochre-covered bodies of Bangarra’s world-class dancers, their bodies representing the land as it lives and breathes. Creation stories of the waratah and the cockatoo have inspired this breathtaking work.

This all Australian commission lit up the southern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, illuminating the rich history of the Eora nation and cultural significance of the natural world around us.