“Plants are Country through songlines and story”
Flora
A co-production between The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, commissioned by The Australian Ballet
Thursday 12th March, 2026
Regent Theatre, Melbourne
Choreography: Frances Rings and the dancers of Bangarra Dance Theatre and The Australian Ballet Composer: William Barton
Costume design: Grace Lillian Lee
Costume Design Associate: Jennifer Irwin
Set design: Elizabeth Gadsby
Lighting design: Karen Norris
Cultural Consultant: Matthew Doyle
Video design: Craig Wilkinson
Research Consultant: Shane Carroll Rehearsal
Directors: Steven Heathcote and Rikki Mason
Assistant Rehearsal Director: Janaya Lamb
Wild Flowers, my response to The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Flora, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
In transparent specimen bags, arranged in a circle, float cuttings of Lemon Myrtle, Warrigal Greens, and Red Bottle Brush. Alongside which, as an incarnation of said flora, coil Yara Xu, Benjamin Garret, and Montana Ruben. But it is more than skin deep. It is as if the two are one and the same, indivisible. The flowers are the dancers, and the dancers are the flowers. Zeak Tass is Kangaroo Paw, Emily Flannery is Red Waratah, Kassidy Waters is Flowering Gum, and Elijah Trevitt is Red Banksia. On the opening night of the world premiere of Frances Rings’s Flora, a collaboration between The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne/Naarm, specimens have been uprooted and are being dried, and in the process, they are becoming artefacts. The living is being collected, the harm of which is forever felt.
The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre in Francis Rings’s Flora, photographed by Kate Longley
10 Days references the specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, from which botanical illustrator, Sydney Parkinson, completed 674 detailed drawings, with notes on their colour, and 269 watercolour illustrations. In a lengthy, meticulous process of extended removal, from Parkinson’s drawings, 743 copperplate line engravings were created to form what would become Banks’ Florilegium. 1400 flora specimens were “ripped from their native Story and their cultural home”[i]. Like the fauna collected alongside the flora, equally indivisible from one another, such collections today reveal a loss of diversity. Revealing the process of Banks and Solander’s ‘discovery’ in this manner, the separation of First Nations meaning, and Indigenous knowledge systems, from the collection they amassed, burns beneath the spotlight. For these specimens were first removed from place and then separated from meaning. On a stage white like the parchment of the page, Tass and Waters duck and weave, as they search for the breeze that once circled their forms, and the sun overhead that once enabled them to photosynthesise. As the specimen sleeves are removed, their rectangular silhouettes remain illuminated on the stage with a tomb-like quality. Only this time, importantly, the ten flora specimens have been selected for their particular significance to First Nations peoples.
Once collected, specimens were given names that pertained to the ‘discoverer’ — the genus Banksia is named after Banks — and placed according to a Western taxonomic system. Trevitt as Red Banksia attempts to resist this classification as they extend the stem of their arm overhead. As if to say, this way of recording does not include the medicinal nor edible role of plants, nor the ceremonial neither, Ruben as Red Bottle Brush gives one last holistic shake. The hierarchical framework does not include a plant’s vital resources for shelter, clothing, and tools, in the enmeshed kin-ship of flora. Some plants are passage markers, others, place markers, and all, one way or another, are friends, in our collective role as stewards for tomorrow. Instead, in the Western classification of species, some were named after their appearance, or Western-ascribed usage, like the Sydney Golden Wattle (Acacia Longifolia) named ‘wattle’, as in “to weave”, after the ‘wattle and daub’ buildings constructed by settlers using interwoven rods of wattle plastered with mud (daub). The “Dharawal people call [this plant] namaraag. When the flowers appear it means burri burri (whales) are on the move and mullet are ready to be caught. When the trees are heavily in flower, tailor fish are ready to catch. Wattle seeds [in turn] can be prepared and crushed to add to other seeds for flavouring damper.”[ii]
With over 1200 species of wattle, Jill Ogai as Golden Wattle announces seasonal change and jubilation “when the pollinators arrive and when ants feed on nectar”[iii]. She shines accordingly, before being cloaked in a black dress, which descends from the rafters and conceals her radiant spirit. A spray of fluffy wattle blossoms in her hair, a bright marker of resilience. Golden Wattle addresses the disconnect between being declared an emblem of Australia and Section 127 of the Constitution which, prior to the 1967 Referendum, stated that “in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.”[iv]
In the first full-length[v] collaboration, commissioned by The Australian Ballet, everything flows in a custodianship about renewal and balance. In an ecological timeline bigger than you or me, beneath the cracked clay in Sleeping Yams, perspective is also altered. The stage reveals itself to be a cross-section of a subterranean world of interconnected roots and ancestral songlines. Overhead, five sleeping yams, Tamara Bouman, Brett Chynoweth, Adam Elmes, Trevitt, and Callum Linnane, awaken. One by one, they extend an arm, rotate their head, and huddle. Suspended by cables, they gently unfurl, and it is magical to behold that which is typically hidden from my view. Whether in ribbon-like extension or folded like a teardrop with legs extended overhead, tucked in the warmth of the earth, both songlines and plant matter. “Plants are Country through songlines and story, carrying knowledge about how to keep our lands and seas healthy.”[vi] And like all good collaborations, where one company ends, and the other begins, is impossible to say, such is the successful entanglement.
The Bush Flowers, at the close of Flora, chime to colourful, hopeful bloom, with thanks to William Barton’s layered and original score, sprung from the flexibility, the dual strength and fragility, of the sinews of a kangaroo. The pleated vibrancy of bush flowers, in exquisite costumes by Grace Lillian Lee, is shown in a new context: in place, returned. Courtney Radford’s Regeneration solo crackles as the fire cools and new growth sparks, a beacon of what is possible. A luminosity, rooted to the earth and “in perpetuity. [For a] living relationship with native plants supports not just survival but [signals a] commitment to hope, healing, and the building of a healthy and sustainable future.”[vii]
Plants guide us all, if we let them.
[i] “Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) removes hundreds of species from their natural environment… Banks’s ‘discovery’ is the largest collection of its kind at the time.” Banks collected specimens over several months in 1770 during Lieutenant James Cook’s first voyage to Australia from England. Flora printed synopsis, The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, Melbourne/Naarm, 2026.
[ii] ‘Knowing Plants’, a project by the National Museum of Australia in collaboration with the Eastern Zone Gujaga Aboriginal Corporation, National Museum Australia, https://nma.gov.au/av/endeavour/plants/#Plant, accessed 13th March, 2026.
[iii] Golden Wattle, Flora printed synopsis, The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, Melbourne/Naarm, 2026.
[iv] Though the Constitution is “a living document, — which continues to shape Australia — [it] is notoriously difficult to change. Since 1901, 19 referendums have proposed 44 changes to the Constitution; only eight changes have been agreed to.” ‘The 1967 Referendum’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1967-referendum, accessed 13th March, 2026.
[v] Flora marks the fourth major collaboration between the companies and the first under their current artistic directors. Building on nearly three decades of shared creative history, from Rites (1997) to Warumuk — in the dark night (2012), Flora signals a new era in the relationship between two of Australia’s most influential cultural institutions. The Australian Ballet media release, 22nd January, 2026.
[vi] ‘Time, Knowledge, People, Story’, The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre Flora programme, 2026, p.15.
[vii] Bush Flowers, Flora printed synopsis, The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, Melbourne/Naarm, 2026.
Act I
Mother Seed
Sleeping Yams
Lungs of Country
Grass Keepers — Spinifex
Grass Keepers — Weaving Women
Hooves are Coming
Act II
10 Days
Golden Wattle
Repatriation
Grass Tree Warriors
Fire Song
Bush Flowers
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Image credit: The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre in Francis Rings’s Flora, by Kate Longley
