This riveting dance-theatre hybrid work, based on the life of the first Aboriginal police sergeant in NSW, is a profound consideration of deep listening
A young man, Archie, is searching Wiradjuri riverbanks for the spirit of his great-great uncle, an Aboriginal tracker with the New South Wales police force. His ancestor was famed for knowing every bird and beast, and possessing the power to deduce from footprints whether a human had been running, walking or fatigued, relying on broken sticks and even ant trails to inform his search.
Archie, who is a character based on Australian Dance Theatre artistic director Daniel Riley, roams inside a lighted circle, seeking the songlines of Alexander Riley, the force’s first Aboriginal police sergeant, who would hunt down murderers and missing children alike. But is this an Indigenous yarning circle, or is Archie encircled in a system that has forced him to give up old blackfella ways?
In the dance-theatre hybrid work Tracker, which previously featured in the major Sydney, Perth and Adelaide arts festivals and is now being staged as part of Melbourne’s Rising festival, three movement artists – perhaps spirits or sprites – thread their nimble limbs around Archie, ultimately transporting and transforming him into his great-great uncle with the aid of a bushman’s hat, message stick and a gold watch upon his wrist. The real Alec Riley received such a watch at his farewell dinner when he retired from the force in 1950. Awarded the King’s Police and Fire Services Medal for distinguished service in 1943, he was nonetheless refused a police pension due to institutional and societal racism – despite having paid into the fund.
Under the joint direction of Daniel Riley and Ilbijerri Theatre Company artistic director Rachael Maza, this is a profoundly affecting work, its pace having been tightened since I saw its premiere at Sydney’s Carriageworks in January. The production certainly benefits from the more intimate space of Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall, and I highly recommend audience members sit on any available seats at the sides of the auditorium, given how close these are to the performers.
Written by Ursula Yovich and Amy Sole, Tracker poses critical questions about modern Australia, especially pertinent with a voice to parliament referendum imminent. How might Indigenous Australians gain equity? Should Indigenous Australians work with a colonial system – be it the police force, or be it the parliament – to achieve such ends? How might we all listen to country?
These dilemmas are played out in the circle as we see Archie flinch at the discovery that his great-great uncle tracked down and helped arrest a fellow Wiradjuri man, Roy Governor, brother of infamous bushranger Jimmie, whose story was later the subject of the book and film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. “What are you doing, tracking down your own kind?” Archie says, then pondering how he would have fought the system like outlaw Roy did, given Australia’s ongoing shame of Indigenous deaths in custody.
Archie delivers a dissertation on how non-Indigenous Australians “chisel” and “chip” at Aboriginal peoples’ identities “with a look that says you’re nothing”, pleading for a future Australia in which his own son might be safe. This cry for freedom finds echoes in the present, as racism crawls across social media in the lead-up to the referendum and racial division is cynically amplified by the federal opposition leader.
In this season of Tracker, as in the Sydney season, casting of the lead role is gender blind. Taribelang actor Ella Ferris, who last year played Wiradjuri tennis champion Evonne Goolagong in Andrea James’s play Sunshine Super Girl for Melbourne Theatre Company, brings her charisma and poise to playing Archie, once again deploying her training at the Australian Ballet School in her fluid interactions with the set of dancers.
Indeed, having a woman in the male role of Archie carries its own poignant resonance, particularly when s/he tells the story of how in 1936 Alec Riley found the body of 22-year-old Ruby Green, murdered at Dubbo following an illegal abortion. In an aching pas de deux, Ferris and dancer Rika Hamaguchi intertwine their bodies as Ferris recounts the recovery of Green’s body from the Macquarie River, and Hamaguchi sweeps her wet hair across the stage floor, leaving streaks. The Wiradjuri tracker had found the impression of the young woman’s head as well as marks from her hair strands in the riverbank mud.
Alec Riley also found many people still alive, carrying a flask of milk to aid their sustenance. In 1940, when a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, Desmond Clark, went missing in scrub land, Riley advanced a theory: there had been a full moon that night, so the child would have walked towards the light. But the toddler’s grandfather refused to let a black man search on the farming family’s property. A search party of about 750 people failed to find the boy.
When the old man died, Riley finally got to stage his own search and prove his theory. Within 12 hours he had discovered the boy’s bones in a chalk pit, some 500 metres from the family homestead. (Director Rachel Perkins’s 2001 musical film One Night the Moon was loosely based on that search, with Kelton Pell playing a version of Riley and singer-songwriter Paul Kelly as a racist white farmer.)
In Tracker, Wiradjuri guitarist and pedal steeler Gary Watling is seated on a platform just outside the circle, playing original music co-composed with sound designer James Henry, guiding the audience through waves of tension and enlightenment. Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones’s set design features three stunning, see-through curtains that are moved about the circle during the performance, depicting Riley’s country and sergeant stripe motifs from his shoulder sleeves.
Towards the end of the piece, the writing becomes a little speechy, and the work would benefit from being pruned. What Archie / Alec says is profoundly true, but less text would be more impactful. For the most part, though, the writing serves the production snugly, with Yovich and Sole’s script authentically informed by the memories of aunties from Alexander Riley’s family.
Running for a trim one hour, this riveting work is emotionally affecting, reminding Australians of our shared history, and how much there is to be gained from deep listening – so long as we are unified in applying what we’ve learnt to start making amends for historical and ongoing wrongs.
Tracker plays at Arts House in Melbourne until June 18.