Clad in regal purple, dance legend Elizabeth Cameron Dalman greeted old friends, collaborators and colleagues to her property on the edge of Lake George on Saturday to mark 35 years of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre.

Dalman spoke briefly to welcome old friends and to point out how fast an avenue of trees recently gifted by Ausdance had grown, an apt metaphor for the growth of dance.

The celebration went ahead as planned when the rain broke to provide a brilliantly sunny afternoon for dancers to strut their stuff on various parts of the property.

I arrived for the second half of the four-hour celebration and was astonished to see multi-instrumentalist and musician, Colin Offord, famous for his music for Banshee And Nuti with the Meryl Tankard Company, seated to perform on conch and flute with Yilan Yeh on gongs, to deliver a song he had written near Mirramu years ago.

Further down towards the water, we saw performances from musicians Mohona, Canberra’s GOLD dancers, Melbourne’s Somebody’s Aunt, Grace Peng Hsiao-yin’s company Dancecology from Taiwan, and Ku and dancers, also from Taiwan, weaving in and out in the surrounding gumtrees,.

Some of the many children present were momentarily alarmed when three of the Mirramu Dancers appeared, ghostlike, in voluminous pink costumes that floated with the wind to perform Dalman’s work, Bride In The Desert, which was inspired by a company visit to Uluru and Kata Juta.

As the sun set, the afternoon finished off with a rollicking session from Bungendore locals Shortis and Simpson, of a few satirical sketches from their recent National Folk Festival gig and an ode to Weereewa—Lake George.