Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin)

Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu translates from Yolngu as "Njurru" (nose) "mil" (eye) "marr" (heart) "miriou" (nothing). It is a rough idiom for the English word "elope" with the implication that if you follow your heart and body and marry outside the dictates of your family and community you lose everything - your kinship, your place in the world, the system of law that lays down all the relationships by which you live.

All things in The Yolngu world are split into two moieties – Yirridja and Dhuwa. Within their society, the laws governing marriage state that all children must have both a Yirridja and Dhuwa parent. To marry someone with wrong skin, someone of the same moiety, is seen as having no place, to become ‘miriyu’, meaning nothing. Today, however, this cultural law may be under threat of having no place. The young people that live on Elcho Island and make up half the population are spread between two cultures, the traditional Yolngu and disco.

Whence, Wrong Skin.

What a show to have to write about. And, I’ve been thinking too long on it. There is so much to write, too much that left me filled with confusion. I’m not sure if I am meant to take it seriously or reach for the gong and knock em’ out of the talent quest. But, perhaps I am still, unjustly, shirty because I had to sit for 1 hour and 20 and unable to walk out AND forced to listen to Hocus Pocus, Here’s Johnny (a techno song I had never hoped to hear this decade or in fact, century. Tonight, I heard it at least 5 times. CHOKE!

Let me start from the beginning – before tonight.

Five years ago, just off the coast of Arnhem Land on Elcho Island at the Galiwinku Saturday night disco The Chooky Dancers were born dancing their rendition of Zorba The Greek–Yolngu style. A fusion of Aboriginal Bunggal dance, hip-hop and comedy their performance was posted in a three minute YouTube video that went “viral” receiving to date 1,535,819 views. A performance that is funny, as well as brimming with the ‘wow’ with their well-rehearsed choreography. The dancers became famous across the world, and since the recent arrival of the mobile telephone on their island they have further been able to download video clips and recreating many other parts of film. They have appeared on Australia’s Got Talent and opened the Sydney Festival, performing to a crowd of 40,000.

In Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin], Elcho Island community and Elders collaborate with director Nigel Jamieson. They fuse (sicks up in own mouth) traditional culture, dance, film and comedy. With a DIY version of mobile technology they perform their own versions of Taiwanese martial arts videos, Bollywood and Sinatra. Performing in painted white clay, they say that, ‘you can’t change a Black boy into a White. Even when we dance to modern music we will never forget our culture or our language.’ In doing so, the performers create a strong sense of satire that, for people who do not speak English, certainly convey an understanding and have the ability to create a cross cultural juxtaposition between what they send up and themselves.

Their story, told to a backdrop of projections that show the island and their run down dwellings, their way of life, plunges you into a hauntingly evocative place that is dripping with a history buried deep in tradition and yet, is packed with humour and emotion. The story of The Chooky Dancers, their home, their culture, their tradition is a captivating story that is turned in to a farce by a white director who try’s to do too much. They tell the story of forbidden love, using traditional dance mixed with Beyonce, Massive Attack, funk and techno. They talk of this complicated modern skin using booty dance and we watch their flesh voyeuristically as their passions unfold, sexual attractions develop and the discovery of freedom.

The combination of story and comedic dance routine presents a few questions, namely, what story are they trying to tell? Who are they performing for? Why? Do they understand the satire? Are The Chooky Dancers being manipulated like puppets on the end of a string? Is the White director cashing in on accidental fame? Is dancing in turbans PC so long as you’ve been marginalised in life? Can I go and busk in the mall, wearing clay on my body and playing the didgeridoo? Am I taking it far too seriously? Do I need to grow some funny skin and have a laugh?

Elcho Island is a remote Northern Territory community of little more than 2,000 where the majority of islanders are under 21 and it is possibly one of the world's remotest places with airfare prices from Sydney to Elcho surpassing those from Sydney to London. For the Balanda (non-indigenous people) who worked on this project a tin of baked beans would cost a fiver and a packet of coffee would cost $35 big ones! It is not unusual for 25 people to share a two bedroom house, to go hungry or to have nothing to feed the kids. Mortality rates are greater than those in Sudan, yet they are part of ’The Lucky Country’. With some slide projections they invite us to see this, to watch on at their discos, their hunting and their gathering, their daily preparations. But then they stop, and they start dancing to Zorba. I don’t get it. The story, theirs, falls by the wayside as the uproarious audience nearly wets themselves.

The switch from dark, documentary into a musical type, Mardi Gras sequence sits uncomfortably like the swallowing of my own vomit. Perhaps it was intentional to create sequences that took you from reflective and evocative moments into the harsh contrast of laugh out loud talent quest but Wrong Skin totally got under my skin! Dance the dance; it is funny! The Chooky Dancers are funny. But the combination of their comedy routines and this play do not mix. Backed to sporadic projections some of which are John Howard and one of his many unforgivable speeches and Christine Anu - and her one notable song, I felt it stole from what was potentially going to be a very exciting, fresh piece in to generic pile of bla!

I left feeling confused. I wanted to see one or the other. The Chooky Dancers doing their thing. Or, the play, as it was with its themes and content but not dissected into cheesy three minute songs. The two hurt my head like the sounds of the Clipsal 500 and the incessant need to blast thousands of dollars of fireworks in to the sky. I’m going to go watch YouTube.

Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin)

Tickets:
Adult $59
Friends $50
Conc $45
Fringe Benefits $25