Ryan Pearson has been an integral member of Bangarra Dance Theatre for six years now, performing around Australia – including at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. But when the company takes to the stage on Friday night, Pearson won’t be there.
It’s the first time the popular Biripi, Worimi, Minang, Goreng and Balardung man won’t be part of a season, but there is good reason: six of his fellow dancers will be performing the world premiere of Pearson’s own work, 5 Minute Call, an unapologetically millennial take on life, queer and First Nations identity, and everything in between.
It is a significant moment for Pearson, who’s making his choreographic debut as part of Dance Clan, Bangarra’s experimental season – back after a decade-long break and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year – that nurtures not only emerging First Nations choreographers but designers, composers and lighting designers alike.
While Pearson has performed in a diverse range of Bangarra works, the desire to explore his own choreographic voice is fairly recent. Growing up in the NSW town of Taree, he was close with his four sisters and grandmother Mary Pearson, the first Indigenous woman to join a professional ballet company, West Australian Ballet, in 1959.
“We all grew up dancing in the lounge room to Missy Elliott, and copying dance routines from music videos, and performing in Deadly Days and Croc Fest, so that was there,” Pearson says. “But doing Naisda [Dance College], joining Bangarra and learning from [former and current artistic directors] Stephen Page and Frances Rings, opportunities have arisen. So it was natural to take what I’d created as a kid to music videos and translate that into the theatre.”
5 Minute Call – the title refers to the final alert to dancers before curtain up – is one of three works being staged as part of Dance Clan, alongside dancer Glory Tuohy-Daniell’s Keeping Grounded and former Bangarra dancer, now youth program coordinator, Sani Townson’s Kulka.
A highly collaborative work, 5 Minute Call is “a personal insight about how young mob feel today, about their identity and how to move around in the world”, Pearson says. More specifically, it’s about escapism. Pearson asked each of the dancers to consider how they achieve euphoria, or mental freedom from the everyday. “It’s about their feelings of escapism – why they leave the world and where they go when they want to escape.”
The responses ranged from evocations of being on Country – the smells or the sound of water – to cooking or smelling their favourite food, and even a cigarette on the balcony in the morning. Pearson has choreographed a different short dance for each vignette.
While he is candid about his struggles with identity as a queer First Nations man and with his place in the world, acknowledging the trauma he and his family continue to carry, Pearson opted not to tell his own story of escape. Instead, he says he’s “sprinkling my salt and pepper on top” of his dancers’ stories.
He welcomed the opportunity to work with other emerging creatives, such as Microwave Jenny band member and composer Brendon Boney, who has composed a club-like, warped electronic soundtrack; Tiwi designer Clair Parker, who is making her debut in the dance-theatre space; and set designer Shana O’Brien. All are being mentored by Bangarra’s highly acclaimed creative team.
Pearson has enjoyed the development process and hopes to learn more about choreographic language, but he admits it felt strange directing his friends and fellow dancers. “Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and still need to learn how to hold it … But the dancers know I haven’t done this before, they’re all in this with me and give their heart and soul.”
This is the first time Dance Clan will have been staged in a decade, but artistic director Frances Rings emphasises that a key part of her leadership centres around nurturing future leaders, both on and off the stage.
“I want to invest in our future. I didn’t only want it to be about the dancers having the opportunities to explore who they are as young choreographers and future storytellers, but that our other creatives had the opportunity to mentor and support interns as well,” she says.
Previous Dance Clan choreographers include Rings, herself a celebrated and multi-award-winning choreographer, and director and former dancer Deborah Brown. But if Pearson is feeling the pressure, he’s not succumbing to it.
“Every developed dancer who’s come in through Dance Clan puts a level of excellence on themselves and all I can do is take that, be inspired by it and move forward. If I’m proud of the show and everyone who’s performed in it, I’ll be as happy as Larry.”
Dance Clan 2023 runs from February 3–18 at Bangarra Dance Theatre, Walsh Bay
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