Bangarra Dance Theatre has announced its 2019 season with a triple bill program celebrating the company’s three-decade history titled Bangarra: 30 Years of 65,000 Years, which will tour to every Australian capital city.

The program, which will bring together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from all over Australia, will open with a restaging of Frances Rings’ 2004 piece Unaipon. The work celebrates the journey of David Unaipon (1872-1967) from the shores of Lake Alexandrina within the Ngarrindjeri nation to his place on the Australian fifty-dollar note.

Beau Dean Riley Smith and Bangarra dancers in Bennelong, 2017. Photo © Daniel Boud

Alongside Unaipon, Bangarra will, for the first time, present the work an international guest artist, Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián. Kylián created his ballet Stamping Ground when he was Artistic Director of the Nederlands Dans Theater off the back of visiting a gathering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, North East Arnhem Land. The work was last performed in Australia by Nederlands Dans Theater in 1986.

“Jiří and Fran are two wonderful creators, and our 30th program is the perfect time to share these...