Folding chairs are arranged in three neat semicircles around the tiny makeshift stage–a slightly raised platform with a jungle backdrop, all purple, green, brown, and gray tendrils, vines, and leaves. Big rocks have been painted onto two folding screens that are placed off to each side, and one suspiciously square boulder rests in lone splendor just to the right of center stage.
Soon after, the same man takes the stage. Without any kind of introduction he kneels and begins blowing into a long tube; it’s maybe three or four feet in length, about three inches across, and it’s painted in bands of brown, beige, and gray. Clearly this is the instrument we heard over the intercom–a didgeridoo–and seeing it played solves at least one mystery for me: I’d wondered whether the sound had been electronically manipulated to create the impressions of static, feedback, and recorded train whistles. It hadn’t.
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Then they demonstrate some “animal dances,” magic rites in which a dancer “becomes” an animal to make it easier to catch during the hunt. The kangaroo is the standout. The dancer half kneels, half crouches; bounds about the stage; curls his hands and rubs his eyes; occasionally holds up fingers for ears; folds his floppy hands puppylike to his chest; and makes delicate digging motions on the floor, carrying invisible morsels to his lips. He has a look of such alertness and intelligence that I feel sorry when the other dancers spear him and he falls to the floor, his hands twitching at his chest.
With 27 employees, 17 of them performers, Tjapukai Dance Theatre is the largest employer in Kuranda. The other biggies are Kuranda’s two pubs, a restaurant, and the local butterfly sanctuary. Kuranda itself was once a whistle-stop on the railway line built when gold was discovered in the region; the railway itself is now a tourist attraction, complete with original wooden cars. Nearby is a spectacular waterfall that Freeman says rivals Niagara during the wet season but slows to a trickle when it’s dry. Tjapukai, which once performed in the basement of a shopping center, has built itself a 300-seat air-conditioned theater, where the group performs two hour-long shows daily, seven days a week.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Bruce Powell.
