This year Bangarra Dance Theatre turns 30 and celebrates the anniversary with a triple bill called 30 Years of Sixty Five Thousand, which brings together the old and the new (to Bangarra), with existing Bangarra works programmed alongside Jiří Kylián’s Stamping Ground – the inclusion of which marks a new footprint for the company.

Stamping Ground. Photograph © Daniel Boud

Not only is Kylián’s work a thrilling piece in its own right, but it is the first time Bangarra has performed a work by a non-Indigenous choreographer, and the first time it has performed something not commissioned for the company. What’s more, the backstory to Stamping Ground makes it a particularly exciting choice.

In 1980, already fascinated with Aboriginal dance, Kylián attended a large corroboree on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, attended by thousands of men, women and children. He was deeply moved by what he saw and in 1983 Netherlands Dance Theatre Company (of which he was then Artistic Director) premiered Stamping Ground, which was inspired by the experience.

In a beautiful move, the work now returns to Country with this performance by Bangarra. Roslyn Anderson,...