Frances Rings

Frances Rings is an Aboriginal Australian dancer, choreographer and former television presenter. She was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and is a Kokatha woman. She is the associate artistic director for the Bangarra Dance Theatre and will take over the role of artistic director in 2023.

Rings mentions being influenced by the way her aunts and sisters told stories, specifically their body language, such as gestures and expressions, and how she is able to see them reflected within the shape of trees. She said in 2022 that she likes choreography that shows "clean shapes and distinctive physical architecture of body", that also embodies the convergence of the spirits of culture, Country and people.

Rings re-staged Terrain in 2022, with the show touring Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane from June to August.

On 2 December 2021 it was announced that Rings would take over the role of artistic director from Stephen Page in Bangarra in 2023.

Within Australia, Rings has choreographed works for leading dance companies like the West Australian Ballet, Tasdance and performed for Legs on the Wall theatre company in Sydney. She has also danced in works by leading Australian choreographers like Meryl Tankard and Leigh Warren. Internationally, she has worked with companies like Kahawi Dance Theatre in Six Nations, Turtle Islands (Canada), as well as Atamira Dance Company in Auckland, New Zealand, where she was a guest collaborator and performer for their production of MITIMITI. In 2018, she choreographed a new piece for Atamira called Kotahi.

In 2016, Rings returned to NAISDA as the Head of Creative Studies until 2019. Within this period, she directed five end of year productions including, Your Skin, My Skin (2014), Kamu (2015), From Sand to Stage (2016), Restoration (2017) and Story Place (2018). After leaving NAISDA, she returned to Bangarra as the Associate Artistic Director in 2019.

Stephen Page asked Rings to choreograph a work depicting Aboriginal views on landscape. She cites her trips to Flinders Ranges, which she used to visit every weekend as a child, and also Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre as her main influence to choreograph a piece that illustrates how geographical features influences people's mood and spirit. She wanted to incorporate imagery of Lake Eyre that she had witnessed during her visit. She states how on the first day of her trip to the lake, it was filled with water, but the next day it was empty and shiny. She also took a tour with an Arabana elder, who showed her around waterholes and sacred sites. She had access to stone tools and ancient paintings that mapped secret waterways. Rings was influenced by literal ideas of elements that make up the physical landscape of the lake, and explored figurative ideas of human connections to land and nature which she incorporated into her work, Terrain in 2012.

As of 2005 Rings was a member of the Dance Board of the Australia Council.

Unaipon (2004) was Rings' third work for Bangarra. It was a celebration of the life of Ngarrindjeri author and inventor David Unaipon (1872–1967), with the work comprising three sections: "Ngarrindjeri", "Science", and "Religion". Each section related to different aspects of Unaipon’s life and work, with the whole work bringing an interconnected story to the stage. Rings saw this as a way of bringing Indigenous stories, which had often been ignored in school curricula, to a wider audience, of bringing them into the mainstream.

Rings has starred in the documentary drama The Widower (2004).

In 1992, Rings graduated from NAISDA. she performed in her graduation performance where Stephen Page, the artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre at the time, saw her, and invited her to join Bangarra. In 1993, Rings joined Bangarra to develop her skills as a choreographer. She also performed in Page's production of Praying Mantis Dreaming, Ninni and Ochres. She became the first choreographic Artist in Residence for Bangarra. In 1995, Rings went to New York on an Australia Council grant, to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for three months. In 2002, Rings made her mainstage choreographic debut with the choreographic production, Rations. She went on to create 6 more works for Bangarra, including Bush (2003), Unaipon (2004), X300 (2007), Artefact (2010), Terrain (2012), Sheoak (2015).

Rings’ earliest memory of dance is watching Young Talent Time (1971-1988), an Australian variety show on television which inspired her to become a dancer. Some of her earlier dance heroes were Alvin Ailey, whom she admired due to his American Dance Theatre which was one of the first professional dance companies that welcomed dancers of all races and backgrounds. Before Alvin Ailey, she was inspired by Michael Jackson.