Echoing the luminosity of the shells, but through the contemporary language of neon, writ large, Sibosado’s riji [4] designs glow throughout “Illume.” Whether pulsing, growing, flickering overhead, framed by the night sky, or layered across, and becoming a part of the dancers’ bodies (through the lowering of a transparent screen), his reinterpretation of designs passed down through generations of Bard people conveys the shared and adaptive systems of kinship and the lore of a living culture. Together with video design by Craig Wilkinson and composition by Brendon Boney, as the individual chapters interwove, the lifeforce of “Illume” felt as though it was taking place in new terrain for the company, reinforcing Sibosado’s belief that “when we live in harmony, we keep adding to the pattern.”[5] 

The brilliant abstraction of the Manawan, or ‘woolybutt’ trees, with their fire-blackened trunks, which came into flower through the activation of dancers wearing singular bright orange gloves like the blossoms at the trees’ crown, in “Manawan,” was a highlight. So, too, the mournful, migration fringing of the Humpback whale (Minnimb), in “Whale Song,” led by Courtney Radford. Purposefully wedged to disrupt these two cues, “Light Pollution” revealed the shattering of sky-lore connection, as a result of colonisation and the ongoing destruction in the wake of invasion. Carrying the load of weighted blocks, the dancers were disorientated and reshaped, for though light carries a rhythm that gives a positive shape to an ecosystem, as seen in the orange blossoms and whale’s migration, ‘light’ when tied to ‘pollution’ “destroys our ability to see the stars.”[6] Light pollution (caused by artificial light, from direct light to sky glow) disregards the circadian cycles of ecosystems, as typified by a strip of headlights turned high-beam upon the audience. Burning bright, it was impossible to see the stars, in the brutality of this action. It was impossible to ignore the meaning, and I hope many won’t.