Laugh lines for a people's survival

Sean Choolburra, who will stage his Oil of Our Land show over three nights in Hong Kong next week as part of the City Fringe festival, says his Aboriginal heritage is integral to his stand-up routines, which combine music, dance and comedy.

'A lot of my comedy's based on white stereotypes and how we laugh it off,' he says, 'because I think we may not have survived as a race if it wasn't for our humour. And that's the same with a lot of races around the world, not just meaning black races. Like, the Irish will say the same thing, and the Jews will have similarities, as well.'

Choolburra hasn't always played it for laughs. He started off studying jazz, tap, ballet and modern dance in Sydney, before joining the Aboriginal Ngaru and Bangarra dance companies, with which he toured the world (including a performance before the Dalai Lama).

But the natural-born joker made a smooth transition to stand-up comedian, winning the National Raw Comedy final at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2002.

'I've always been into comedy,' he says. 'Me and my brothers and sisters grew up watching Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy, and their comedy routines really appealed to black Australians' sense of humour - their jokes about racism, families and all that.' One of the highlights of his career as a comedian came after race riots tore apart Sydney's Redfern district in February last year. 'A few nights after all the trouble, there was a peace conference and I decided it was time to have a good laugh,' he says. 'A lot of my routine is dance-based, and I got up there and did my thing and I almost caused another riot.'

This will be Choolburra's first time in Hong Kong and he's excited about coming to the birthplace of another of his idols, Bruce Lee. Hong Kong chop-socky flicks were big in his house as a youngster, and he describes Lee and Jackie Chan as 'deadly' - Aboriginal slang for cool.