Bangarra Dance Theatre: Rethinking Indigeneity in Australia

Bangarra Dance Theatre: Rethinking Indigeneity in Australia A thesis by: Charlotte Schuitenmaker 10212795 rMA Art Studies Supervisor: Dr. B. Titus Second reader: Prof. Dr. J.J.E. Kursell University of Amsterdam 21/01/2019 CONTENT INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 3 1 – BANGARRA’S EXPRESSIONS…...…………………………………………9 1.1 – Dance and Indigenous Australia………………………………………9 1.1.1 – Dance and music as modes of expression…………………...11 1.1.2 – Dance and music as systems of authority…………………...14 1.2 – Contemporary dancing………………………………………………..15 1.2.1 – Contemporary dance: An Overview......................................15 1.2.2 – Bangarra’s dance…………………………………………….20 1.3 – Presenting Indigeneity………………………………………………...22 1.3.1 – Bangarra’s performances…………………………………….22 1.3.2 – Bangarra’s promotion………………………………………. 31 2 – REASSEMBLING BANGARRA: THE INSTITUTION AS AND WITHIN A NETWORK……………………. 34 2.1 – Bangarra’s establishment……………………………………………...37 2.2 – A Page family business: choreographer, dancer and songman………. 39 2.3 – The theatre…………………………………………………………… 45 2.4 – Audiences and tickets………………………………………………....49 2.5 – Institutions and modernity...................................................................51 3 – MESSAGES: THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND STORIES…………54 3.1 – Indigeneity as identity…………………………………………………55 3.2 – Contemporary storytelling…………………………………………….60 3.2.1 – Stories: past-present-future…………………………….…....64 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………….……67 REFERENCES……………………………………………………….……….……71 2 INTRODUCTION The Bangarra Dance Theatre Company is a Sydney-based institution that produces contemporary dance theatre shows inspired by Indigenous cultures in Australia. Carole Johnson, a dancer of African-American heritage, established the company in 1989, with Stephen George Page as Artistic Director since 1991. Page’s Aboriginal heritage stems from both the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali, a clan of the Yugambeh tribe in the south east of Queensland. Since 1992 the company has produced new shows almost annually and the team tours across the country. Besides performing in well-known venues in cities, the company initiates ‘Return to Country’ performances, which are free shows for Indigenous Australian people whose culture is performed in the shows. By performing contemporary dance shows based on Indigenous Australian stories, Bangarra challenges notions of Indigeneity and modernity. The Bangarra company claims its mission is “[to] create inspiring experiences that change society”1 and states: Our dance technique is forged from over 40,000 years of culture, infused with contemporary movement. The company’s 16 dancers are professionally trained, dynamic artists who represent the pinnacle of Australian dance. Each has a proud Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background, from various locations across the country. Our relationships with Indigenous communities are the heart of Bangarra, with our repertoire created on country and stories gathered from respected community Elders. It’s this inherent connection to our land and people that makes us unique and enjoyed by audiences from remote Australian regional centres to New York.2 Since Indigeneity in Australia is inseparable from politics, it is not hard to imagine what Bangarra’s mission to “change society” is based upon. An example of the company’s performances is Dark Emu inspired by Bruce Pascoe’s book of the same name, which deals with the - according to Pascoe - wrongly appointed tag of hunter-gatherers for pre-colonial Aboriginal peoples. In 2017, the show Bennelong dealt with the life of Woollarawarre Bennelong; an iconic Aboriginal person who was a member of the Eora nation and is considered to be one 1 Bangarra, “Our Company,” accessed 08-01-2018, https://www.bangarra.com.au/about/company. 2 Ibid. 3 of the key figures for the salvation of his community’s culture.3 Another example is the show Mathinna, performed in 2008, which presented the story of a young Aboriginal girl who was stolen from her parents and adopted into Eurogenic colonial society. In this performance, Mathinna represents the ‘Stolen Generation’ of Australian Aboriginal people and reflects on a time of extreme intolerance toward Indigenous peoples. Indigenous Australians have endured many acts of violence, such as exile and genocide since the arrival of the British in 1788.4 While Indigenous inhabitants have been living on the Australian continent for at least 40,000 years, Indigenous peoples only became legal citizens in 1948, taking another two decades before discriminatory laws against Indigenous populations were abolished.5 Protests and demonstrations for Indigenous Australian rights still occur regularly today, as Indigenous populations are subject to the ways and manners of the dominant Eurogenic settler-society. The clash between the dominant settler-culture and Indigenous Australian cultures evokes tension, which manifests in high rates of unemployment and substance abuse amongst Indigenous communities.6 Therefore, media often depict Indigenous peoples with negative connotations, resulting in an overall pessimistic attitude towards Indigenous cultures in Australia. Moreover, academic, and in particular, ethnographic discourse has portrayed Indigenous Australians as ‘primitive’ peoples, in comparison with the ‘modern’ settlers.7 Art historian Okwui Enwezor explains: I would argue that there never was a pure modernity to which some other non-modernity suddenly became exposed. Because modernity was always double-sided, the “others” were always there. The “non-modern” had to be there from the beginning in order for modernity to define itself. (…) Contact was, and remains, the manifestation of the dark side of modernity. It is the attempt to dominate, to subjugate, to replace the life-world of the “non- 3 The Eora people belong to the area now called Sydney. 4 Corn, Aaron. “Sound Exchanges: An Ethnomusicologist's Approach to Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in Collaboration with a Remote Indigenous Australian Community.” The World of Music (2009): 22-23. 5 Chesterman, John. Civil Rights: How Indigenous Australians Won Formal Equality. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2005: ix. 6 Atkinson, Judy. “Violence in Aboriginal Australia: Colonisation and Gender.” Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal Vol. 14, no. 2 (1990): 5-21. 7 Fisher, Laura. “The Art/Ethnography Binary: Post-Colonial Tensions within the Field of Australian Aboriginal Art.” Cultural Sociology Vol. 6, no. 2 (2012): 255. 4 modern” with the knowledge of the colonizer. This series of substitute experiences begins from the process of evacuation of – let’s call them “native knowledges.” Knowledges rendered as primitive, as underdeveloped, as relegated to the past, with no proximity to the future or the present.8 Here, Enwezor explains how modernity and what he terms as ‘native knowledges,’ are mutually exclusive. Bangarra, however, challenges this by establishing itself as a contemporary Indigenous company. This thesis will reflect upon the Bangarra Dance Theatre Company and the ways in which it advocates a rethinking of Indigeneity, a rethinking that includes modernity. Academic literature addressing Indigenous Australian performance practices often focuses on pre-colonial practices. Indigenous studies, therefore, lack attention on contemporary Indigenous Australian performance expressions, such as Bangarra’s productions. Very few authors have shown interest in these expressions, such as Peter Dunbar-Hall, Chris Gibson and Stephanie Burridge.9 Dunbar-Hall and Gibson’s book is a valuable resource for the purposes of this thesis. However, their publication provides an overview of different contemporary Aboriginal expressions, without providing in-depth analyses about how these contemporary expressions came into being and what processes underlie these contemporary developments. Furthermore, art theories – and among those, dance theories – often neglect non-Eurogenic arts practices. André Lepecki claims dance to have become crucial for ‘thinking [about], making, and curating visual and performance-based art’10, yet, this phenomenon is very ‘under-theorised’.11 Lepecki, however, has established himself as an important author on the subject. Based on his notion of contemporary dance, this thesis will examine what contemporary dance means for the Bangarra Dance Theatre. While the idea of art may be of Eurogenic origin, contemporary art’s organisations, such as Bangarra, demonstrate this outmoded idea of arts. Art theories by Howard 8 Enwezor, Okwui and Terry Smith, “World Platforms, Exhibiting Adjacency, and the Surplus Value of Art,” in Talking Contemporary Curating (Independent Curators International, 2015): 89-90. 9 See: Dunbar-Hall, Peter and Chris Gibson. Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004.; Burridge, Stephanie. “Dreaming the Future: The Emergence of the Bangarra Dance Theatre,” Australasian Drama Studies 41 (2002): 77-89. 10 Lepecki, André, ed. “Introduction. Dance as a Practice of Contemporaneity.” Dance: Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2012: 14. 11 Ibid. 5 Becker and George Dickie are just as applicable to Bangarra’s practices, as other forms of art. This thesis emphasises the inclusion of a non-Eurogenic art expression – Bangarra - into the realm of art with the assistance of the Actor-Network-Theory by Bruno Latour. I argue that Bangarra’s art is not established by the choice of dance styles solely, but

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