In a rehearsal space in Sydney, two First Nations choreographers are finding common cultural threads that have shaped them – bodies of fresh or salt water, the southern sky and generations of strong women.

Together, they are creating a new work, The Light Inside, for Bangarra Dance Theatre’s first-ever mainstage international collaboration, as part of its forthcoming major touring show Horizon.

Moss Te Ururangi Patterson in rehearsals for Bangarra Dance Theatre. Photo © Daniel Boud

Māori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, a proud mokopuna (grandson) of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribe, speaks of his childhood in Tokaanu, a small settlement close to Tūrangi at the southern tip of Lake Taupō, which fills the caldera of a volcano on Aotearoa/New Zealand’s central north island.

He was raised there by his grandmother and her sisters, his “giggling aunties”, as he calls them, whose beautiful singing would waft across the marae (meeting ground). These women were formative influences on Patterson, who rose to become Chief Executive and Artistic Director of The New Zealand Dance Company in 2023.

“I remember them like it was yesterday,” he says. “The village sits next to a geothermal area. It’s ancient, you know, and...