TIMELESS MOVEMENT
AT THE PRECISE MOMENT her uncle died, an owl perched itself on the back fence. It gazed through the house like an X-ray. Come dawn, it would fly away to wherever owls spend their sleepy days, returning to the same spot every single night. Nothing, it seems, would budge the owl. Not that Tamara Pearson wanted it to go. She knew what or, more precisely, who the owl was.
Tonight, Tamara is an owl. Not that owl; not exactly. She scratches sharply in the dusty earth, flutters in and out of feverish shadows that have a life of their own thanks to a palpitating light show.
Her freaky, folkloric get-up sentences the uninitiated pre-schooler to a childhood of night terrors. But the children of Cape York Peninsula’s Aboriginal communities who flock around the Laura Dance Festival circle tonight – way, way past their bedtimes – do not fear the owl. They know things; things that this white fella does not and most likely never will.
Tamara is principal for Cairns-based Sacred Creations Dance, four outback hours’ drive away. She’s not competing in the daytime inter-community challenges, but has the daunting task of providing nighttime entertainment at one of the most important cultural events in Australia. Her deputies are an amalgam of her nieces and a mob of Laura town’s progeny “who’ve never really got the chance to dance at their own festival”.
It’s almost impossible for an outsider to truly grasp the minutiae of Indigenous dance, culture and spirituality in a few days, but if you have the chance to do it anywhere, that chance will come at Laura’s festival.
For a start, some things simply aren’t supposed to be seen
