DesArt-Indigenous Dance Performance in Australia Part 1

I met Patrick outside of the Alice Springs Resort, a grassy oasis sitting awkwardly amidst the arid and sandy valley that cradles Alice Springs. He is currently the producer of a dance performance on September 8th connected with the MobArts festival. The festival is produced by DesArt, an organization in Alice Springs and Darwin that lobbies for the representation and respect for the creations and rights of the Aboriginal people of Australia. The Australian government has displayed legislation that is nothing short of racist, and the white black relations of this country are heated and unjust.


On August 17th, 2007, the parliament in Canberra passed a law that some say will go down in history as one of the most racist legislations in modern society. Others are more receptive of the policy, as it provides huge funding for infrastructure such as medical care, police, and housing projects. Conversely, state wide bans on grog (alcohol) infringe on what is normally conceived of as human rights. Here are two different articles from Australian source on the legislation. Australian Broadcasting Company , AAP.


The dance event brings together some of the oldest and most respected members of the different tribes, and has a special importance considering the recent legislations of the government.


The timing of the event in relation to recent legislation is not the only factor of unique importance to the dance event. The old telegraph station is one of the fist colonial settlements the English built in Alice Springs. Part missionary, part cattle ranch, the settlement was responsible for the ‘re-education’ of the Aboriginals. Many of the dancers have parents and grandparents who were round up by the mission, only to experience dislocation, sickness, and sometimes death.


Patrick was quick to warn me that the dance performance would not be a display of remarkably dynamic choreography. Aside from the Mornington Island tribe who is notorious for their expressive dances, dance for indigenous communities in central Australia is not, by their definition, a mode of performance. More so, dance is an appendage for ceremonial events such as meetings between tribes and initiation rights. This performance starts to blur the boundaries between ceremony and performance, and the terms of the event have been a touchy issue for both Patrick and the eight tribes attending. The languages represented by the tribes attending are the Pitantantjarra, Ngaanyatjarra, Arrernte, Alyawarre, and Luritja. The special guests coming from far out of town are the Mornington Island Dancers. Hailing from Queensland, the Mornington Island group has an extensive international touring history, and is notorious for their more elaborate dances.


Historically, dance corroborees (meetings between different tribes) of the sort to be had on September 8th are held out bush. They are not open to any individuals who have not been initiated into the Aboriginal community. The Aboriginals to this day practice a very important initiation ceremony. For the males this includes circumcision during the teenage years, I am not sure what the woman undergo, but it is now held in close contact with health facilities. Before, when the dances were only to be viewed by initiated members of the community, the dances were thought of not as a performance or as choreographed expression, but moreover the accompaniment to the ritual or ceremony at hand, which was undoubtedly more important than the dance’s movements. Here, dance is tremendously tied to storytelling, ultimately linked to different clans' totemic animals, and the land that these totems entitle them to. 'Songlines' are songs that tell the story of the territories that each tribe guards over, and from what I've read a whole mapping of the territories of Australia can be drawn from the ancient songs of the Aboriginals. The connection between the dances presented on September 8th and the ‘dreaming’ of their totemic animal is inextricable.


Patrick and DesArt are trying to bridge the gap between the arts of the Aboriginals with the dominant culture of white Australia. Through sensitive preparations and much discussion with the different performers, the performance, on September the 8th, will be the first of what many people here hope to be a tradition of supported public performances of indigenous dance. The benefit goes to hugely diverse areas of society. From the indigenous performers who get the chance to celebrate their culture, to their children who often dance in the performance, to the divisions in the dominantly white community of Alice Springs and, more broadly, Australia, the dance performers will hopefully be one of unification and recompense.


In a society where problems of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and diabetes plague daily life, these dance events offer a chance for tremendous gathering and the meeting of old friends. 8 different groups are attending, some from more than 1000 km away. The next week will be spent preparing the location at a dry river bed, promoting the performance around town, and spreading the word to the many hostels for indigenous elderly and disabled.

'NZAC' New Zealand's Arts Curriculum

My intention to travel to New Zealand as part of my Watson project came to fruition in Hong Kong while attending the Hong Kong dance and education festival. While in Hong Kong, I was compelled by New Zealand's forward thinking dedication to dance as an art essential to society.

In the U.S., the majority of community dance programs and dance outreach programs are administered by arts presenting organizations and private dance companies. In New Zealand, the government picks some of that effort up. Curious of the history and labour that went into passing NZAC (New Zealand Arts Curriculum), I sat down with one of its primary designers, Dr. Christina Hong.

Currently associate professor at Unitec’s dance department, New Zealand’s leading university for contemporary dance and choreography, Dr. Hong was instrumental if not essential in passing NZAC. NZAC is a government-funded arts education policy that makes dance compulsory for primary school children. I sat down with Dr. Hong to talk about the hurdles of getting such an innovative policy off the ground.

When asked about gathering support for NZAC, Dr. Hong replied, "New Zealand was always ahead of its time with regards to arts advocacy. One must remember our size can be our greatest strength. I always figure that because we are so small, any arts policy that might be possible, however forward, would be possible here."

As for getting dance considered within the New Zealand Arts Curriculum, she said it was important to view dance, like visual art, and drama, and music, as one of the four expressive arts. “Once that community was crafted within the four other art-forms, it was much easier to get NZAC off the ground. We were also in an environment in which the three other representatives were all willing to work together, never was the drama or music leader not willing to budge on something. Given the cooperation between the four disciplines, progress within the Ministry of Education was possible.” Viewing dance as its own breed, a more feral animal than the other three expressive arts, would probably have buried any chance for a government funded compulsory dance curriculum.

She went on to describe how a successful metaphor, ‘literacy,’ became wide spread in the arts and education sector. “In 1999, 'literacy' emerged as a popular metaphor through which to present arts advocacy. Being literate, in any discipline, became something we often described the importance of dance through. It also meshed with my own dedication to post-modernity, and its presence in New Zealand as a multi-cultural society.”

When I first heard Dr. Hong speak in Hong Kong, she first greeted the audience in Maori, than in English. New Zealand has been innovative and broad-minded in embracing its position as a post-colonial nation dedicated to the diverse cultural aesthetics of contemporary society.

She went on discussing the problems with quantifying the benefits of dance, and more broadly, art. “Another point of argumentation was fitting dance under the outcomes based education model. Some argued that dance might be quantifiable, and its outcome apt to some sort of evaluation system, but that is really impossible.”

One of the other reasons NZAC was successful was the timing. The proposed it directly in the middle of a 5-year national curriculum evaluation, the Ministry was prime for that kind of pro-active move. In the fall NZ is up for a presidential election. The Nationals, who have been out of party for the past 8 years are gaining momentum against the incumbent Labour party. The longevity of New Zealand’s revolutionary arts curriculum policy is not certain.
Documented benefits exist, for more references to the affect of NZ integrating dance into the public school system, view:
http://www.tki.org.nz/
http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/

Community Dance in Auckland, New Zealand

On August 14th I visited an undergraduate class of Dr. Ralph Buck. ‘Community Dance’ is a class engineered by Dr. Buck to educate dance students how to teach dance to children in primary and secondary schools. I first met Dr. Buck at the Hong Kong Dance and Education festival in the summer of 2006. He serves as associate professor of dance at the University of Auckland and in 1994, lobbied for a complete revision of the dance pedagogy at one of New Zealand’s leading universities. His vision of dance education is one driven by, ‘joining solidarity with significance.’ Finding the most significant ways to fit dance into the multi-cultural aesthetics of New Zealand fuels his efforts.

An essential component for the second and third year students enrolled in the class is to design and teach a three session long arts residency program. Dr. Buck usually contacts a local school for children with special needs to work with throughout the semester. I attended one of the sessions taught by Dr. Buck’s students, as well as a follow up class in the classroom at the University.

This class is innovative in its focus on teaching dance to children with special needs. Moreover, underlying Dr. Buck’s pedagogy is a commitment to providing undergraduate and graduate students of dance the skills and knowledge to carve out a career with dance in New Zealand’s society. Rather than teaching endless ballet, he teaches how to design and propose an arts residency program. Instead of spending hours on the annals of dance history, he chooses instead to imbibe his students with the tools to use dance in alternative community programs throughout Oceania—one of his alums is currently working as the founder of a traditional dance competition in Fiji. In an environment of dance education and pedagogy that is primarily concerned with pumping out technically impeccable dancers for a market that is jammed with bodies, Dr. Buck’s conception of what it means to teach dance is visionary and sustainable—whether or not it hinders perfect pirouettes.

Two weeks after our first meeting I was invited to accompany one of his classes to their residency program. The joy on the kid’s faces as we entered the gymnasium at the school outside of Auckland was buzzing. As soon as they saw Dr. Buck, smiling kids exclaimed Dr. Buck! Dr. Buck! The idea behind Dr. Buck's class is to promote the completion of a final product. Directly related to the situation of dancers going into schools or other institutions as artists-in-residence, they have four classes to work with the students, with the ultimate goal of having a performance. In this community dance program, moving beyond the stage includes moving onto the stage.

The class broke into two groups. The first group started a warm up that included running, breathing exercises, and expanding and decreasing size (get as large as you can, get as small as you can). Meanwhile, the other group started a warm up by having the students do solos, each about 10 seconds long. One kid, Dean, was a great hip-hop dance, he was a 21 year old baller, who offered shout-outs to his homies, his aunties, his crew, his ladies, and his grandfather. Sporting a diamond cross as bling, he was raw, down to his practiced popping and locking. Another student, Blair, was testy, grumpy, not trusting anyone but he smiled broad when he actually started dancing.

One could not estimate or evaluate how important these classes are to the children. Although some of the student’s class leaned towards the side of teaching new moves rather than offering the students an avenue towards the creative process of choreography, the impact was ecstatic. Not only do the students of Dr. Buck’s undergraduate class in community dance learn the challenges of bringing dance to a diverse selection of individuals, simultaneously a community who would otherwise not have access to the benefits of dance might open their minds to creative movement.