Australia’s Dance From The Heart?

By Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain, Co-Artistic Directors of Marrugeku

During a Marrugeku research project titled Listening to Country the company’s patron, cultural dramaturg and my grandfather Patrick Dodson made a statement that has been key to our choreographic processes in Marrugeku. He said:

“In Aboriginal spirituality the complexity created by modernity wasn’t part of where we were. We now find ourselves in this complexity without having the necessary song, ceremony or dance to interpret the interface of the old and new competing realities. We need to find the new narratives, songs and dance to respect the land, and help us relearn respectful ways to interact with nature, cultures and human aspirations” (P. Dodson 2011).

We believe it is important to discuss the ‘complexity created by modernity’ for dance in Australia in order to explain why the need to relearn to dance and to tell stories together is so important as a means to discover the processes, collaborations and aesthetics which enable these ‘respectful ways to interact with nature, cultures and human aspirations’ that he speaks about.

Patrick has argued for Aboriginal people’s control of their own community’s decision making to address dysfunction, whilst also and always maintaining a focus on the big picture issues of cultural identity, treaty negotiations and implementing the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2017 while addressing the annual Closing the Gap report he stated:

Implementing the declaration is a necessary pre-condition for governments to close the gap of Indigenous disadvantage and to reset relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, to build trust in order to work together to overcome past trauma and build a more reconciled future. (Dodson, 2017).

Addressing the pre-conditions to closing the gap through resetting relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is where the work of dance between artists of First Nations, settler and immigrant descent can participate and can contribute counter narratives performed in highly visible outcomes for a wide range of audiences. We are an intercultural company and choreographic processes of meeting each other in difference, through dance is what we do, so the implications of this are particular to us but we also wish to offer questions that arise in our practice for dance artists more generally. In Marrugeku the questions that arise in our projects are what drives us, they are the seeds of our new works and the reason we have been unable to put down our tools so far. We wish to put to you today these questions: How, in these conditions, can we dance together in the gaps between us, conscious of our differences? How can we make dance together and how do we witness each other dance? What forms of dance enable us to productively listen to one another and to listen to land that is danced on? What contemporary dance processes are able to pay attention to local and national histories and to map new cultural pathways to the future? And by counter-argument we also ask what forms of dance have inherently contributed to the silencing of such histories and attentions? What processes and platforms for dance dis-able such meeting and exchange and therefore dis-able a “more fuller expression of nationhood” which the Uluru statement reaches for, to shine through?

Rachael:

Our project in Marrugeku has been to engage in the possibilities of “resetting relations” that Patrick Dodson spoke of through intercultural and trans-Indigenous exchange in dance. We have come to understand that a lack of acknowledgement of the land that Australian dance is danced on, contributes to dance’s version of “the great Australian silence” famously identified by Stanner (1969). We would like to put it out there that this silence has produced a stasis, a political, emotional and cultural inertia and a site on non-encounter in contemporary dance in Australia. At the same time has encouraged mimetic motifs of neo-primitivism in dance which continue to circulate in contemporary Australian choreography today. This is the unfinished business that we challenge dance in Australia to address. It is one aspect of the truth telling.

[…]

Ceremonial dance and responsibility

For us the implications of considering sovereignty for dance and the land it is danced on begins with the acknowledging the power and presence of the rich and vibrant ceremonial dance practices which have been danced on this land for millennia. This is also how Marrugeku began, in processes of transmission, with the sharing of Kunwinjku dance in the riverbeds around Gunbalanya.

Ceremonial dance differs greatly of course from contemporary dance in important ways, including the conditions under which it is undertaken, the cultural authority implicated in who practices it, and its functions in the maintenance of culture. The critical role of dance in maintaining law, sustaining culture and a sense of self within the world and the ongoing loss of this practice is felt with increasing urgency in the communities Marrugeku has worked in and in the homelands around Australia of the Company’s dancers. Our discussion today is not an attempt to construct an artificial continuity between so called ‘tradition’ and so called ‘modern’ dance practices, or to position contemporary dance in some kind of false authentic framework, harking back to pre-contact authenticity, but to understand the productive capacities of tradition in its evolving liveness, and the role of experimentation within revival processes, undertaken in contemporary lifeworlds. These are big subjects which have informed the past decades of our work and we can only touch on them briefly today. We acknowledge that we cannot know the inside, or sacred and secret aspects of ceremonial dance practices. In western academic terms, with its appetite for acquiring knowledge and constructing meaning, it is impossible for us to write or speak about something which we cannot know. In cultural terms also we can’t speak for something that is not ours to know. However, working with cultural custodians throughout Marrugeku’s working life has shown us that there are ways of giving space for, and acknowledging the presence and power of knowledge which it is not our place to know about in detail. It is also a way of acknowledging and positioning the experience of ‘not knowing’ which we believe is a critical first step in meeting each other through dance.

Dalisa:

[…]

Learning together about a certain cultural story or concept opens many new experiences. While connecting what you hear and learn about another persons’ Country and culture to your own, the feeling of being responsible to bridge gaps in understanding becomes apparent. The creation of a space where every artist co-devising a particular work is enabled to respond from their own distinct perspective to the information shared, has enabled a joint responsibility between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists involved. The sense of telling the same story, the right story, the full story relies on everyone having equal access, even if out of differentiated understanding of the public/open content explored. The artists apply their own imagination and creative responses to, as Patrick said: “find the new narratives, songs and dance to respect the land, and help us relearn respectful ways to interact with nature, cultures and human aspirations.”

The excerpt from Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain, "Australia’s Dance From The Heart?" Closing keynote speech for National Dance Forum, 2019.

Dalisa Pigram

Dalisa Pigram is a Yawuru and Bardi woman born and raised in Broome, north-western Australia. Co-artistic director of Marrugeku, together with director and dramaturg Rachael Swain, Dalisa is a dancer and choreographer with the company and has been a co-devising artist on all productions, touring extensively internationally, nationally and to remote regions of Australia. In her community, Dalisa coordinates and teaches the Yawuru Language Programme at Cable Beach Primary School and is committed to the maintanence of Yawuru language and culture through the arts and education. Dalisa is co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange.

Dr Rachael Swain

Dr Rachael Swain is a settler artist, born in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is co-artistic director of Marrugeku, together with Yawuru dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram. She works between the land of the Gadigal in Sydney and the land of the Yawuru in Broome. Rachael is a director and dramaturg of intercultural and trans-disciplinary dance projects, a scholar and a practice-led performance researcher. Since the company’s founding, she has co-conceived and directed many of Marrugeku’s productions, which have toured throughout remote and urban Australia and around the world. She is the author of Dance in Contested Land—new intercultural dramaturgies (Palgrave, 2020) and co-editor of Marrugeku: Telling That Story—25 years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural exchange.

Marrugeku

Marrugeku is an unparalleled presence in Australia today, dedicated to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians working together in order to develop new dance languages that are restless, transformative and unwavering.
https://www.marrugeku.com.au

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