Like many early paintings from Papunya, very little information was recorded on the subject of this work. It could be that the central circle is a ceremonial pole with three people seated around it, represented by U shapes. The figures are seated within a figure-eight-like symbol that represents a ceremonial sand painting. Egalie’s later works would be defined by his use of bright colors, but this one, with just a few colors, brilliantly captures the sweeping movement of ceremonial dance.

Papunya paintings refer to the integrated realms of ceremony and Country. For example, Charlie Mutju Egalie Tjapaltjarri’s Ceremony Dancing (1972) emphasizes the paths of dancers in an ampersand on ritual ground, while Wallaby Dreaming in the Sandhills at Tjunti (1977) by the same artist, evokes the passage of Warru, the Black-Flanked Rock Wallaby ancestor, across the artist’s Country via three water places (concentric circles). While the first example refers to the traces left by performance of ceremony (and assumes the Country to which that ritual refers), the second refers more clearly to the features of place, describing the path and rate of movement of Warru, hopping though sparse vegetation dotted across the red earth of parallel sandhills. Both ceremony and Country have their source in the actions of the Tjukurrpa ancestors, and, in the minds of the artists, these realms are bound and indivisible.