Performances in the Woods
Suddenly, he jumped up and yelled, "The curtain, the bloody curtain up yer scurvy blokes, idiots and yer royal assholes hold, I say, the damned show goes off!" He moved quickly towards a clearing about ten yards square, at the top of a small incline. As he quickened his gait, I presently found myself running to keep pace with him. He reached the place well before I did and he paced the perimeter of the setting, all the while humming "Matilda" and "Bolero". He moved raptly around from front to back and from side to side. He hummed the melodies loudly and snickered with condescension. Still humming, he began to move abruptly, seemingly to imitate a troupe of four or five dancers, as at stage center, for a few seconds he crouched low kicking out his feet in Cossack fashion. Then at the back of the stage (clearing), at full height, he loped gracefully swinging both arms in large circular arcs while turning his body in tight spirals. Next, he turned backward and pointing his feet out gingerly and bending at the waist, rolled his torso while moving from side to side. He gave the impression, with his devilishly adroit moves, of a small troupe of dancers, and as the eye followed him, it was not altogether difficult to conceive it, because of his method of presentation, running from sections to other parts of the "stage" so artfully. He danced as though he had seen a similar performance before. Presently, he began a series of poorly formed leaps in the section of Bolero near the end, where a lustrous modulation dramatizes, with great impact, its tragic theme and musical malefaction, as Tom conceived it. Then he continued to sing, choreographing as he went, the Australian National Anthem, "Waltzing Matilda". For this he employed an amazingly deft and complex footwork, and in a deceptively subtle manner, he seemed to split in half horizontally as his upper torso floated effortlessly, and then his steps became more vigorous, and he lurched as if to ape his own drunkenness in a sort of linear continuum of controlled syncopated staggers, while his arms brushed the air with arcs in graceful sequences of ambivalent yet studied beauty. After these strenuous exertions, he walked over to a small creek, and he lay there almost submerged. He drank a long drought of water and this seemed to refresh him considerably.
... Excerpt III, Woods in the Moonlight