Told in three sections “Place,” “Body,” and “Spirit,” Frances Rings’s“Sheoak” is a lesson still to be learned, as relevant now as it was when it debuted in 2015. Like the endangered Sheoak tree, endemic to Australia, and much of our flora and fauna, “Indigenous languages, customs, and lore [are also under] threat”[1]. And so, this work is both about the Sheoak tree, whose green branchlets of scales (leaves) resemble the feathers of the Cassowary (hence belonging to the family Casaurinaceae), and the role the grandmother tree plays. “The Sheoak, like the grandmother, has a role in family and community life that is about protection, the wisdom of elders, life’s journey and the spirit of survival. Children were often left under the protective bough of the Sheaok while parents gathered food. Since ancient times, the Sheoak tree has provided Aboriginal people with wood for weapons, tools and even canoes and the branches were used for windbreaks and shelters.”[2] Choreographed by Mirning woman, Rings, with music by Munaldjali and Nunukul man and renowned composer David “Dubbo” Page, whose legacy resides “in the heartbeat of Bangarra’s storytelling”[3], the Sheoak tree is symbolic; the roots of the Sheoak are the past; the trunk, the present; and the branches, the future.

In “Place” the Sheoak tree on the stage before me bears hope, hope in the sense of rising again. The Scar Tree cast mourn the loss of the fallen trees, and in doing so, rise again, and “adapt to a new way of life”[4]. In beautiful, textured costumes by Jennifer Irwin, which bear stylised elements of the tree herself, the Scar Tree cast form a loose circle, and several dancers slowly lift one another from the ground. With feet slightly flexed as they are raised, torsos facing upwards, they gently settle like a new shoot. Those held aloft sway as if, like the branches themselves, their limbs are being moved by the elements, and the effect is mesmerising. Whether in full ensemble moments or solos, like that of the Sheoak “Spirit”, the sense of renewal is palpable.