It was agreed with the artist that she would create a major choreography for the “Local Troupe” season of Flying Off the Edge as well as perform in other people’s new works, take a series of community classes and work in several schools, and work on our community performance of Tracks and Clusters. Dorathea also requested time to work on her own choreography. She requested working with David so she could create a solo on him.

Dorathea had founded an Indigenous dance group in Canberra called Gloworms. It was a children’s group that provided her with the ideal platform to develop her “fusion” techniques. Dorathea had a strong belief in teaching young people to head into a future. This made her an asset in working through schools, especially at Ludmilla primary. Schools Dorathea worked with were Ludmilla Primary, St John’s College, Nightcliff High, and Driver High (Palmerston) After Schools Program for Aboriginals (ASPA).

Dorathea also taught a series of open community classes in her own fusion style of Afro Jazz and Indigenous. This class was attended predominantly by non-indigenous people although it was intended to be predominantly Aboriginal participation. In hindsight Dorathea suggested that the classes were not in a venue familiar to Indigenous people, however we were unable to find such a place.

“Local Troupe”, was a performance group created through the Brown’s Mart Community Dance Programme, which was established for people with dance training as a way of providing a higher technical exploration. Within this group Dorathea took on a performance role, performing in the community dance performance of Tracks and Clusters as well as in the season of professional work Flying Off The Edge. She also took on rotation of the Company Class which provided the local dancers with valuable insight into her technique and philosophies, and in turn informing her choreography. This was important as her choreography was created in a looser way than the dancers were used to, Rather than duplicating exact steps, Dorathea was after a feel and a style. Although this was at first frustrating for the dancers who did not know what they were doing wrong, it led to a very interesting work Dancing Images of the Dreaming. This work fused traditional and contemporary movement and provided a rare opportunity for non-Indigenous dancers to be involved in the different creative processes that Dorathea utilised.

One of the most valuable things in Dorathea’s residency was when she would actually dance herself. This was indeed eye-opening for all as we could “see” what she was on about.

As the first Indigenous residency for Tracks, this created perhaps many more questions than answers. The issues of traditional and contemporary, the different roles of men and women, questions of who can perform the steps, the sensitivities of urban Indigenous people as against the more traditional remote community people, protocols and the gaining of permission (not failsafe). The sensitivities of Darwin’s Indigenous people to traditional material is different to that of Southern city counterparts as they are often closer to and still living strongly the traditional lifestyle. One example we came across was the use of ochre, or specifically, the design used. Dorathea had been given permission to use the design from one group, and a local Larrakia traditional owner confronted us as to “who gave us permission to use her family’s traditional design?” This led to a robust situation with discussion around whether Dorathea, (as a non-local woman) had any rights in Larrakia Country. This resolved when people realised that although Dorathea’s heritage is from Central Australia, she was in fact conceived and born in Darwin, and was brought up traditionally in Oenpelli, Arnhem Land.