‘Dreaming’ of a Return to America

When the Aboriginal Cultural Foundation of Australia sent a touring company of dancers to the United States in 1981, it made a startling and unique impression on both coasts. In sheaves of positive reviews, a typical one claimed: “The entire experience was awesome. When the first contact is made with life on other planets, it is doubtful that the experience will be more astounding.”

Now, 14 years later, the aborigine performers are finally back, with a three-clan troupe that will perform “Dances of the Dreaming” this week at UCLA. Why did it take them so long to return?

In a phone interview from Tucson, the second stop on a five-city tour of the American Southwest, foundation administrator Lance Bennet lets out a sigh. Finding the money to finance a return “has been a tremendous uphill battle,” he says.

“In our country, there has been a steady drying up of funding for the traditional (aboriginal) arts in favor of funding for the more city-based arts.”

As a result, says Bennet, “on this tour, the bulk of the funding ($200,000) has come from the United States” in the form of advances paid by presenters sponsoring the performances.

Bennet, who has been with the Australian government-created foundation--based in Darwin and overseen by an executive committee of tribal leaders--since its beginning in 1970, says many Australian bureaucrats are “oblivious” to the current plight of aboriginal culture. “If not nurtured, it can disappear.”

On the current tour, three distinct clans will perform on the same program, Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the outdoor Sunset Canyon Recreation Center at UCLA.

Two of them come from northern Australia: a group from northeast Arnhem Land (“the richest storehouse of aboriginal culture,” Bennet says), and the Tiwi from Bathurst, one of the Islands of the Tiwi. The third clan, the Walpiri, comes from Australia’s central desert area, outside Alice Springs.

Body painting, dance styles, instrumental and drum accompaniment, singing and language are distinct with each of the three groups. For instance, the Walpiri employ the densest body decoration. They cover themselves completely with bush cotton (balls of fluff), which is colored with red and white ocher, and they also extensively paint their faces.

The Tiwi clan performs mostly unaccompanied, its only music created from clapping and slapping sounds. The clansmen--and women--from Arnhem Land use the didjeridu , an end-blown, straight, natural trumpet (for which the Arnhem Landers have 40 different names), in combination with clapping sticks.

The works that will be presented this week are sacred but public ceremonies or cultural rituals. Authenticity is a principal concern, Bennet says: “These ceremonies and rituals are unchanged from their homeland presentations.”

The three-week tour of the Southwest has already stopped at Tucson, Tempe, San Antonio and Austin. After three days here in Los Angeles, Tuesday through Thursday, the 30-member troupe of men and women, ages 17 to 70, flies back to Darwin on Friday.

“This is mostly a new generation of performers, people who have not been here before,” Bennet said, on the phone from Tucson.

One of the Tiwi dancers, 37-year-old Donald Bonindjirri (pronounced Bone-ind-YEAR-y), then took the phone and described the way his people live: “Everything we need we find on our island. We live off the land. We harpoon fish, we hunt meat--emu, wallaby, buffalo, shellfish, turtle. We have fruits and vegetables, many wild apples.”

Bonindjirri said, “I perform a lot at home, but it is good that we have come to America. I have met a lot of interesting people asking about our culture.”

Bennet says that clan leaders are “acutely aware of the danger of losing this culture--they have seen changes in the clans within even the past 10 years--of losing young people to the cities, and of not perpetuating the elements in the culture.”

Is racism one of the elements that puts aboriginal cultures at risk?

“Oh, yes, racism is involved. I would not hesitate to use that word.

“But, beyond that, there are so many undermining influences from the Western world. These cultures must cope with all the superficially glamorous elements of the outside. And the heritage is one that has to be practiced to survive.”

M orton Gould, the 81-year-old American composer who won his first Pulitzer Prize 12 days ago, was home in Great Neck, N.Y., when we caught up with him last weekend, still “elated,” he said, from all the excitement of winning.

How was he spending this Saturday? What else?--composing.

“I’ve got a bunch of deadlines,” Gould said, “and, by golly, I’m going to meet them.”

The current piece on his drawing board is a commission from the Pittsburgh Youth Orchestra, and is due to receive its first performance in the fall of 1995. “Stringmusic,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, was written for conductor Mstislav

Rostropovich and the National Symphony and given its premiere in March, 1994.

Doesn’t he think it took the Pulitzer committee an awfully long time to notice him?

“Oh, no, I don’t have time to be bitter about anything. I’ve always been in motion, so I don’t think a lot about these things.

“The day the award was announced, I was at a meeting at ASCAP in New York City”-- Gould was president of ASCAP, the group that collects royalties for composers, authors and publishers, from 1986-94--”and my colleagues there told me about it.”

Gould’s mixed 20th-Century style--sometimes serial, other times using unusual key relationships, as in his familiar score to the ballet “Fall River Legend”--has been called eclectic, though even that does not describe it fully. Is the half-hour “Stringmusic” in that idiom?

“Some people say there has been some style change in my writing, over the years. Looking back, I think I keep the same approach. Basically, whether each piece is lighter or heavier, there is a continuity in my gestures and textures, a musical physiognomy, I think. But it’s not for me to say. You critics can figure it out.”

In any case, the newest piece awaits. Three years ago, Gould says, the same Pittsburgh Youth Orchestra commissioned a work for rapper and orchestra, specifically for young audiences. Gould called it “The Jogger and the Dinosaur.”

He says it got “a lot of performances around the country. The new one is about firefighters. That’s all I can say. It’s a work in progress.”*