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UMA, Trump, global warming — the causes of depression proliferate daily. How fortunate, then, that the unassuming town of Clanwilliam in the Western Cape now boasts a miracle instant-cure rehab spa for the suicidal.

I stumbled upon it by accident, thinking I was going to have an ordinary meal at an ordinary small-town restaurant, one masquerading under the name Dam Bistro. I slouched morosely at my table, muttering grumpily about the apocalypse.

The jolliness of the German tourists at the next table only made my own funk seem worse. The breezy macho chatter about long, empty, dusty roads from the bikers behind me filled me with bitter, corrosive envy.

But then the restaurant began to reveal its true identity as an antidote to angst: the starter came, a selection of West Coast tastes including curried prawns, apricot jam, snoek paté, roosterbrood and biltong butter. Yes, biltong butter.

My spirits lifted with each curried prawn. How come you could get such a potent mood enhancer without a prescription? And wait, how come the dozen or so teenagers who had just streamed out of the kitchen and started dancing in front of me were so unconscionably happy?

They were euphoric. They radiated contagious joy, bliss, elation, glee, delight. The last of the prawns was forgotten in midair on its way to my mouth. My mouth itself was contorted in an inane grin. If my hands weren’t so sticky, I would have jumped up and applauded. Suddenly life was too short for despondency.

My misery was cured, nuked by the Nuwe Graskoue Trappers. These are the legendary folk dancers from the village of Wupperthal who went to Los Angeles two years ago and won gold medals at an international competition. They dance the riel, a traditional folk dance that has its origins in rituals performed for centuries by the Bushmen, and they dance it with the enthusiasm of the possessed.

The outfits have been updated from loincloths and animal skins, but only as far as about the 1950s — the boys wear red veldskoene, waistcoats and hats, and the girls are in calf-length dresses, aprons and kopdoeke. The dancing is a bit like tap, a bit like jitterbug, a bit like line dancing, sometimes a bit like the twist, but it’s unique, and it’s uniquely fast. And uniquely happy.

The therapist-in-chief behind both the restaurant and the riel dance troupe is Floris Smith, who actually has no formal qualifications in psychiatry. He is a chef, formerly of the five-star Bushmans Kloof resort, and a retired ballet dancer, formerly of the Performing Arts Centre of the Free State.

It seems strangely wonderful to come across a man of such rare talent, generosity and compassion in an out-of-the-way dorp in the Cederberg, but he has always defied orthodoxy. He is from a place you have not heard of, Deben in the Northern Cape, but from the age of five he grew up in the then Northern Transvaal and the Free State.

“Growing up in the Free State, the conservative kind of, you know . . . you play rugby and you do sports,” Smith says. “But I always had a passion for dance. I did it in front of the mirror, and I loved dancing.”

He took the restaurant route because dancing doesn’t pay the bills — although it remained part of his life. Working as a chef at Sabi Sands he learnt gumboot dancing, and in KwaZulu-Natal he ran a traditional Zulu dance group.

He discovered riel seven years ago, when he went to the annual riel-dancing competition staged in Paarl by the Afrikaans language and culture body, ATKV. At the time he was preparing gourmet meals at Bushmans Kloof, which lies between Clanwilliam and Wupperthal, a village established by Moravian missionaries in 1865.

“I was looking to contribute to a community project in the area, specifically Wupperthal. I now knew about the riel and I was into it. So we started the group. It was great for me to be able to transfer my knowledge of stage presence, movement.

“I can’t teach the kids to riel, it’s a difficult genre for me to grasp because it’s a natural way of dancing, you either have it or you don’t.

“Then in 2013 they won the trophy [in Paarl], and they just went on and on and on.”

On and on and on included their triumph in Los Angeles, which overnight transformed riel from a minor curiosity into a national performing arts sensation. Smith resigned as executive chef at Bushmans Kloof in February last year to focus all his time and energy on the group.

“The riel just became alive, you know,” Smith says. “Since 2015 it’s just boomed. The Nuwe Graskoue Trappers have become an idol for many communities because they saw what could happen with something as basic as the riel.”

And what can happen is that countless lives can be transformed — the lives of children growing up in poverty, surrounded by terminal alcoholism and domestic violence. Many of the children are victims of fetal alcohol syndrome, and even if they aren’t, there are few opportunities for them beyond low-paid farm jobs.

“That’s the sad part,” says Smith. “Many times I wish I had all the money in the world to have a hostel put up and take the kids out of those circumstances . . . it’s quite amazing to see what conditions some of them come out of. You spend two or three days a week with them max, and then they go back to that.”

The dancers who went to LA spent two weeks in four-star accommodation.

“Your bed gets made every morning, you get fresh white towels every morning . . . When you fly back, some of them go back to having to share a room with other siblings, there’s no running water in their houses, and they’ve become these stars, but they still live in the same conditions. It’s quite heartbreaking.”

But Smith is showing the children they can aspire to a better life, “and motivating them — with hard work anything is possible”.

About four months ago Smith bought the Dam Bistro and has ambitious plans for it — including changing the name, because it’s not a bistro.

Also on the agenda are regular evenings like the one I attended, a set meal in the courtyard accompanied by riel dancing on the stoep. The restaurant provides tourists the chance to see the famous Trappers, and it provides training and jobs for the dancers.

“The one girl has just finished school with good grades, but there’s no money to go study, so she’s a waiter here,” Smith says. “She’s going to put money away, she’ll then go study. It’s a priority for me to create jobs for kids within the project. At least there’s a job opportunity, to be able to work towards achieving your dream.” LS

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