Thomas E. S. Kelly slowly moves onto the stage, back to the audience, all but naked, until finding then donning a T-shirt and trousers. Deftly, at the outset of [MIS]CONCEIVE, he has moved from the dreamtime to the colonial present.

It’s a difficult transition that this 50-minute dance and spoken word performance on the Tandanya stage at the Adelaide Fringe Festival is grappling with: Sharp, precise movements, some of them repeated as a pattern, are dealing with the misconceptions that for Aboriginal people, some of them in Alice Springs especially, are part of daily life. 

Are you a "real" Aborigine if you are pale-skinned? If you have a lavish moustache? If you don't have broad features? These exchanges in the show are funny but must be exasperating and wearying when they are repeated over and over as people of mixed descent who identify as Aboriginal move through life. 

Why is education a flop? A particularly expressive sequence suggests the students' perspective on this – one of not being seen or heard. 

What’s behind booze abuse? Why do so many Aborigines not have a job?

They're lazy, goes the stereotype. At this moment the four dancers are lolling on the floor, idly looking into the crowd, for quite a long time. The audience lights go on. Some think the show is over and applaud. But clearly the lights mean to shine on the public: It’s you guys who’re saying all this.

Meanwhile, the cast, three women, one man, assert their heritage and identity which live on in their "multicultural bodies", ending on an upbeat note.