If you were to imagine a performance by an Aboriginal dance company odds on it would kick off with the primeval throb of the didjeridoo and feature a face-painted mystic man wearing next to no kit. Funnily enough, Bangarra Dance Theatre's the Dreaming starts just like that. But it's not Bangarra's aim to preserve Aboriginal heritage in aspic. Under the direction of Stephen Page, the intention of this 10-year-old Australian company is to show that the culture of this ancient indigenous people is a living thing, adapting to the restless demands of a modern nation.
It's a laudable credo, but while the Dreaming sets out to fuse traditional myths and rituals with contemporary music and movement, it too often ends up falling into a time-warped limbo between old and new. While fitfully evoking a haunting mood drawn deep from the emotional well, there are times when you expect Rolf Harris to come wandering on and start painting on the rocky backdrop.
A lot of this rootlessness is down to David Page's score which takes the keynote sounds of Aboriginal music - the clicking sticks, the rumbling didjeridoo - and mutates them in the synthetic way that Enigma made a mint out of Gregorian chants. By softening out the rough and threatening edges and filling the air with eco-friendly easy listening, much of the potential dynamic tension of the dance is lost.
Which is a shame, for there are stretches when Bangarra's lithe performers, drawn from an ethnic mix of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, Australia's lesser-known other tribe, do compellingly bridge the gap between past, present and future. When the choreography has them writhing floorbound, connected to the earth and striking curious animal poses, the echo of some eternal songline hangs in the air.
When Page strays into more contemporary, rock video style territory the spell is broken. While his dancers are interpreting their own folklore the movement has an intensity and grace that shreds any notion of out-datedness. Yet the Bangarra ethos demands regular outbreaks of sub-balletic modernism as if that's a way of proving you aren't living in the past.
That's something of a cock-eyed philosophy when the moments the stage comes truly alive are those that speak directly from the Aboriginal experience. Blandly assimilating modern moves is a step back into the past rather than a bold stride into the future.
