Home is a central theme in Bangarra's 'The Light Inside', honouring Country and First Nations people of the Oceania region.
After moving to Brisbane, co-choreographer Deborah Brown found herself drawing inspiration for 'The Light Inside' from her mum.
Brown is a descendant of the Wakaid Clan and Meriam people in the Torres Strait with Scottish heritage.
Her mother was born on Badu Island, and raised on Thursday Island, making the move to Brisbane before Brown was born.
When her mother left her ancestral Country, it was the items and practices she brought with her and cultivated in her new home which inspired Brown.
"There was always a cultural presence with how she set the house up, what music she was listening to, or how she was gardening," Brown told AAP.
"All those things that were important to her and important through her lineage, even though you're in a modern society, those things, those little seeds were still present."
Brown, who had been a dancer with Bangarra for 13 years, said she was grateful to already know the dancers she was working with when an accident forced her to change her approach at the last minute.
"I had fallen at my local shop and fractured my sacrum and that put me out of commission for eight to 12 weeks," she said.
"It became a really interesting process where I had to verbalise everything via Zoom ... I couldn't move around so I couldn't demonstrate a lot of things."
Brown was also grateful to work with co-choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, a mokopuna (grandson) of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribe from Aotearoa (New Zealand).
Patterson was also looking at his family, and the result of their collaboration is a cross-cultural ode to matriarchy and what it means to call somewhere home.
"Both pieces really have beautiful homage to our matriarchs, to our mothers, but it's amazing to see the different energies," Brown said.
"He's got such a fiery energy ... it's really volcanic and mine, because I'm drawing from the Torres Strait, there's this calm water, reef feel to it.
"Exploring these two energies has been really exciting in a show like this. I think there's something for everyone."
'The Light Inside' will be showcased across NSW and Victoria as part of Bangarra's 2025 regional tour.
The company will deliver workshops to schools and communities across the regions they visit.
"A lot of artists are coming out of smaller communities as well," Brown said.
"For really dear friends I've made along the way, a lot of them from those regional communities, it's always been a particular piece of theatre, a particular piece of dance that's inspired them and kept them on their journey to follow their own dreams."
The tour will begin in Wollongong on February 13, then head to Newcastle and Adelaide in February and March, and Bendigo, Geelong, Wangaratta, and Ballarat in October.
