Illume is dazzling, literally so. In the broadest sense it’s a visually stunning kinetic artwork combining movement and music with images by First Nations artist Darrell Sibosado. His practice – he works with light – and his Country are the inspiration for Illume’s mind-bending, shape-shifting journey through time and space.

It starts, logically enough, at the beginning. A star-filled immensity floods the stage and spills out into the auditorium. The electromagnetic force that has enabled life on earth lets us be and then lets us see.

That connection between being and seeing – physically and metaphorically – shapes Illume. I would add learning to the experience too. It’s a rare Bangarra work that doesn’t give an audience something new about this continent, its history and its natural and spiritual environment.

Bangarra Dance Theatre: Illume. Photo © Daniel Boud

Anyone who attended last year’s Biennale of Sydney will have seen the work of Sibosado, a Goolarrgon Bard man from Lombadina in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, and understood he is a man in communion with the past, not living in it. Illume makes that plain from the outset too with the magical image of...