we met Steven Page and Francis Rings, respectively former and current artistic directors of Bangarra Dance Theatre, to discuss what this recognition means and the powerful message behind Terrain.

This is a really exciting time for the company, especially the time of arts in this country nationally.

I think getting a global acknowledgement is extraordinary, let alone being a First Nations arts company.

Just being recognised makes you appreciate the amount of work and the energy involved.

and the focus that's been driven to sustain Bangarra dance theatre today.

Previous winners obviously have been Pina Bausch and different individual choreographic visionaries or artists who created contemporary language in the global dance world.

So personally for me, when that was acknowledged, I thought there was this wonderful acceptance of the exploration of this crossover of contemporary and tradition.

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you with you with them.

But I couldn't say, I couldn't confirm or deny anything because I didn't want people to know because I didn't want anybody to slip up, whether it was interpreters, any of our Afghan allies.

So I'd be like, hey, this is my capabilities.

This is what I can give you guys, not only what I need, but what I can do in return.

Like I can give you guys the report of that.

Hey, or I can get you linked up with some sources and stuff like that.

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Well, if

it was like a big band jazz thing, that's great.

But it was kind of a very old-fashioned, kind of uptight world.

So we found this one studio where we could rent it from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., where it was cheaper that way.

We bought one reel of tape, which was about 20 minutes of tape, and recorded all night up to, like, we finished with Fight the Power by Public Enemy.

because we had like one minute of tape left and we didn't want to waste it so we just played the song until the tape ran out yeah yeah and then we just put the same five songs on both sides of the cassette because it was like a demo we were going to hand out at south by southwest we went down to south by southwest which we were not invited to like there's a canadian showcase and none of the canadian labels liked us they all thought we were like a novelty group they were embarrassing um And again, it's because Canadian labels at that time, they were afraid of everything.

They wanted things that looked or sounded like American or British bands that already existed.

That's