Victorian College of the Arts - Theses

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End date: 2020 × Start date: 2020 × Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: Aboriginality ×

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    Aboriginal contemporary dance practice: embodying our ways of being, knowing and doing through dance storying
    Port, Rheannan Marlena ( 2020)
    Abstract The Master of Fine Arts project embodies a practice of journeying to identify the connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and dance practice. This is realised in a rematriating learning paradigm that enables a distinct dance lexicon and pedagogy specific to my Aboriginality, while emphasising heterogeneity with Aboriginal Contemporary dance and Aboriginal peoples. The project employs a transdisciplinary method encompassing Aboriginal worldviews, protocols and values specific to my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity to safely navigate and negotiate Pama|Bama ways of being, knowing and doing within the academic space. This is inclusive of practice-led learning, dance cycle, storying, life writings and old ways for new ceremonies. In the cycle I learn of the social structures and socio-cultural disruption of my cultural identity to establish a social, cultural and political standpoint in the project, together with the herstory of Indigenous contemporary dance in a chronological order, including its social and political foundation, to situate myself within the Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) contemporary dance genealogy. With the knowledge I place my embodiment as an Aboriginal woman, mother and dancer central to the learning. In the project, I engage narrative, autoethnography and embodied writing techniques to create an immersive mapping of my embodiment of Country to contextualise Aboriginal contemporary dance within its artistic and cultural entirety. This is practiced through a body of creative work: four exhibits embodying my sense of belonging, and a written thesis in autoethnographic representation within a colonial ethos and practice. In this project, I learn my cultural knowledge comprises of both fluid and fixed consciousness, and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a means of expression for cultural revitalisation, healing and education. Therefore, in this practice Aboriginal contemporary dance performs as a medium for knowledge transmission within contemporary society. The connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a manifestation of self-knowledge, elevating social, cultural and political perspectives of my Aboriginality.