‘I need money for a nanny’: Advice for parent dancers from Bangarra’s co-CEO

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Frances Rings. The Wirangu and Mirning woman, 54, is a dancer, choreographer and the artistic director and co-CEO of Bangarra Dance Theatre. She has won six Helpmann Awards.

MONEY

Is it true that you grew up wanting to be a dancer from a young age, but there wasn’t enough money for you to pursue it? That’s correct. I didn’t even realise that dance could be a career prospect, that you could make it your life, be paid for it and travel the world.

The dream! Only you didn’t know it could be one. I had no idea. But girls at my school did ballet, and I was like, “Well, I’m already a dancer” – in the backyard with my siblings, creating these little productions. That was our play, our imaginary world, our escape – and, in a lot of ways, a tool for survival.

Interesting. Most people think of dance as artistic expression, but you also frame it as a tool to protect yourself. How so? Because you could be whoever you wanted to be. You could create whatever world: you could be rich, from a different country. I loved that. When I was in year 11, dance was brought in as an HSC subject. That’s when I began formal dancing.

Great timing. What I’m most proud of now is that HSC students study Terrain, which is one of my works.

What’s been your scrappiest period as an artist?
When I arrived at NAISDA [the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association], I was 17, turning 18. I lived in this little bed in Darlinghurst and scrimped and saved. I got shingles because I was so stressed about surviving, had no idea how to save money and was eating very little.

Do you have any advice for artists – especially dancers – about how to make it work financially? Think about mapping out your career early on. Use community, peers and elders as mentors and support systems. There’s this myth that you’ve got to make it on your own: you don’t. There are a lot of people who’ve been in your place and want to support you. And if you’re a parent, say, “Hey, I’m really interested in this project, but I don’t come alone. I need to have money for a nanny and I need to cover their flights.” Unless you say that, you’re not going to get it.

What do you like spending money on nowadays?
Clothes. Usually, I’ve got a power jacket on – as armour.

BODIES

So your work is your body.
It absolutely is.

What do you like about that, and what’s tough?
I love how my body is the script for our stories and for our history. The other side to that is, as you get older, you feel the injuries. You feel your body changing. While I still honour and respect and love my body as an instrument, I also mourn the loss of what it used to be able to do. But now I’ve got a company of 16 dancers who can do that for me.

What does a lifetime of using your body for work do to it – for better and worse?
You have the ghosts of a career. The wear and tear of that echoes and resides in your body. I feel it in the mornings now. I feel it on days when the weather changes. As blackfellas, we also wear a cloak of trauma throughout our lives; that never leaves us. But that’s why doing this, for me, is so healing. It’s medicine. It’s walking forward. I’m not going backwards, I’m not standing still, and I know that I carry the company with me when I do that.

DEATH

What do you believe happens when people die?
I definitely feel their presence, that they become our ancestors, they are around us, that they’re still very much connected to us. I like to keep them alive by speaking about them; I often talk to them. They’re often in my works. With blackfellas, there’s ceremony and ritual and a cultural framework for death. There’s such care and inclusivity. When I go home, there’s this beautiful sense of gathering and leadership.

Leadership is an interesting concept to think about in the context of death. Tell me more about that. You are given the responsibility to ensure that people are respected and honoured in how you say goodbye. I lost my sister last year.

Oh, I’m so sorry, Frances. Was she older or younger than you?
She was older, but only by a couple of years.

That’s tough.
But I felt her and knew that she was still there. And in the actual act of saying goodbye, the family holds each other up. There’s something deeply primal about the wailing and mourning and letting go. We were sitting around afterwards with this sense of ... exhaustion, sitting with family and all the ancestors who are buried on Country as well. Then my niece came out and was like, “I’m just going to put on some music.” And she started playing my sister’s playlist – and it was Shania Twain. We all cracked up laughing. Intersected with this deep mourning was also this laughter, humour, light and joy.

What are your requests for your own funeral?
Oh, I hate attention on me. I’m so low-key.

Does that mean you want a low-key funeral?
Pretty much. I’ll have a playlist. But I’d just like to be remembered with positivity and joy and with my sister, for the light we brought into the world.

Bangarra’s Horizon is at the Sydney Opera House until July 13 before touring Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne.

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