This Ballet Interlude forms part of a larger work, Kaditcha an operetta in three scenes. Clive Douglas travelled and toured widely throughout Australia and developed a strong interest in Aboriginal folklore. His compositions sought to reflect a 'National' musical idiom and he made frequent use of Aboriginal literary and/or musical references. These musical references are relatively difficult to recognise being obscured by their incorporation into the idiom of Western art music.
Douglas was well-respected as a conductor, orchestrator and educator as well as a composer of concert music and documentary film scores. His style was essentially tonal although highly coloured with exotic harmonies, occasional dissonances and extensive use of rhythmic ostinati. He has been criticised for his conservatism which however, simply reflected the vocabulary of musical pictorialism then current in Australia derived from European models of the previous generation.
