Bangarra's Mathinna is a tour-de-force of dance and emotion.

At Cairns Civic Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday night (Nov 1-2), this was the second time around for the troupe that performed Mathinna in 2008.   

Set in the 1830s, it follows the tale of a young Aboriginal girl, stolen away from her culture, adopted by a white family, dumped in an orphanage, and then her subsequent problems when she returns to an Aboriginal community.   

What was surprising for me from this performance was the strength of the dance chorus and their dominance onstage.   

Bangarra's artistic director Stephen Page presents such a fascinating mix of contemporary and indigenous traditional dancing; strong, energetic, and emotive.   

The male dancers hanging from a tree, looking and acting like bats, were tremendous in their power and mannerisms at the start.   

The scenes flowed seamlessly from one to the other in the hour-long performance, with changes in costume and character throughout from the cast.   

What emerges overall is a very sad tale of a girl who never quite fits in, and who is haunted by her people.

She is the outsider when she is adopted by Governor and Lady Franklin.    

While she puts her hair up, wears western clothes, and tries to emulate her adoptive mother, she is still the "native" who hasn't quite yet been "civilised", which we hear in brief voiceover.   

It's never more obvious than when at a ball she is placed on a pedestal in front of the crowd in her red dress, framed, as in a painting, evocative of the water-colour by Australian artist Thomas Bock of a Tasmanian Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, that inspired Bangarra's production.   

In the orphanage, Mathinna is the outsider once again, trying to replicate the moves of her classmates, which she eventually does, but still they make fun of her.   

Finally, she returns to an Aboriginal community and we see Mathinna, played by Elma Kris, release her hair and reach out to her community, but they are now wary of this westernised girl.   

Instead of finding the peace and acceptance for which she so obviously yearns, she is gang-raped, turns to alcohol, and drowns at the age of 21.   

Elma Kris dances this role with great passion.

She shows the character's need and longing very clearly and one cannot but empathise with her plight and sense of being so alone and lost.    

There is very little that could possibly be better with this production.   

The sets were minimal but extremely effective.

The dancers were superb.

The music, while it hasn't stuck in my head, was effective in assisting the mood of the piece.    

The dance work might benefit by being split in two as audiences tend to start shifting around in their seats if left too long, and it would have been nice to have a longer solo number from Elma Kris at the climax.    

The only real frustration of the evening was a child crying in the audience early on (should small children be allowed in an auditorium for adult theatre?), but even that wasn`t enough to stop me being absorbed in the show.   

Bangarra's Mathinna is a strong and emotive piece of dance theatre; an unusual and exceptional work that is both educational and enjoyable.    

>>Bangarra's Mathinna continues to tour regional Queensland until November 22. For more information, visit www.bangarra.com.au/2011/Mathinna.

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