Dance Research Aotearoa
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Dance and Disability: Embracing difference, tensions and complexities
No full textIn this paper I am particularly interested in unpacking the notion that dancers with a visible disability are both marginalised and hyper-visible. I refer to selected dance examples available on YouTube and consider these in relation to Whatley’s (2007) presumption of difference indicators in support of my aim to expand research into the area of dance and disability. Viewing these dance examples provided a ‘bouncing off’ point from which to unpack how these performances are perceived and made meaningful by their audiences. Drawing from discussion tasks set at several different conferences in response to viewing these dance examples, I share initial findings and consider issues that arose in embracing difference, tensions and complexities
Dancing Aotearoa: Connections with Land, Identity and Ecology
No full text“Dancing Aotearoa” emanates from my conviction that, even in today’s highly globalised and mobile world, it is not only possible but also important to recognise a contemporary dancer and choreographic practice that is distinctly from Aotearoa New Zealand. Its importance resides in the fact that, 174 years after the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi), between the British colonisers and the MÄori, Aotearoa New Zealand is still grappling with its social and cultural identity. Dance, along with the other arts, is one way of working out what it means to be a New Zealander in these times.Arguably more than the other arts, however, the dance artist experiences the world sensuously, emotionally and physically. S/he is attuned through a dancer’s embodiment to be able to respond to the shapes, forms and energies of place by matching, morphing, shaping and re-shaping the space. His/her rhythms derive from an internal pulse and from the visual and felt rhythms of the landscape. This landscape might be constructed, angular and urban or elemental. It might be psychological, intuitive or imposed. It is my view that a dance artist has the potential, along with the other arts, to speak for ‘this’ time and place—ecologically, socially, culturally or politically—and in so doing help define our national identity. In the following article I offer a commentary on connections with land, identity and ecology that can be seen in the work of some dancer/choreographers of Aotearoa. My commentary reflects my own depth of experience as a dancer/choreographer and educator, as well as some preliminary research with a small group of other dancer/choreographers whose artistry I have witnessed and who chose to engage with this issue.Â
Culture moves?: The Festival of Pacific Arts and Dance Remix in Oceania
No full textThis reflective essay is a journey through my dance studies work with a discussion on the role of the Festival of Pacific Arts in shaping dance in Oceania, and particularly its impact on Banaban dance from Rabi in Fiji. I encourage future discussion and development of a field of ‘Pacific Dance Studies,’ with preliminary thoughts on the role of ‘remix’ in Pacific dance practices, especially as they are shaped by and reflected in this important regional festival.Â
Reflexive turning in culturally pluralist pedagogy for dance education: A refractive prism of understanding
No full textIn this article, drawing on data that I collected from teachers during a doctorate inquiry completed in New Zealand in 2010, I explore critically reflexive perspectives that could empower teachers to implement culturally pluralist dance education. Using the imagery of a single beam of light passing through a prism, I locate issues for reflexive examination that arise when considering how to make sense of pedagogy and praxis in teaching culturally diverse dances from contextual perspectives within culturally pluralist pedagogy. The beam captures dance education in a culturally pluralist pedagogical paradigm. In passing through a prism it is refracted, splitting into its spectral component rays, each containing a separate expectation for teachers and requiring its own reflexive turn of thought. Consideration of these expectations is timely in terms of respecting the people who own the traditions we include in dance education and the changing ethnic mosaic of nation states globally
Te Auahatanga me te Ara Auaha Creativity and Creative Process: The Bright Creative Life
No full textDiscussions on creativity available in the English language are dominated by western theorists and western philosophical understandings. These understandings emphasise individuality, innovation, the rational, and the necessity of a creative product. However, feminist, non-western and indigenous theorists assert the importance of culture, community and the non-rational, such as the spiritual, and place less emphasis on creative products. A Feminist Participatory approach informed by Indigenous Peoples' worldviews (FP-I) provides a lens through which creativity may be viewed with an appreciation of the wider lived experience of the creative person. For a dance practitioner or researcher, this wider lived experience may include rational and scientifically verifiable elements, but also non-rational elements of relationship, community, culture, spirituality and the natural world. The Bright Creative Life approach arises out of such a worldview and includes preferring, practising, gathering, selecting, finding quiet spaces, laying creative work aside, and ritual, prayer and meditation
Greek dance and everyday nationalism in contemporary Greece
No full textIn this article I explore how dance as an everyday lived experience during community events contributes to constructing national identities. As a researcher living in New Zealand where issues of hybridity and fluidity of identities in relation to dance are currently a strong focus for discussion, I was inspired to examine dance in my homeland, Greece. In a combination of ethnography and autobiography I examine dance as an embodied practice that physically and culturally manifests the possession of a distinct national identity that can also be used as a means of differentiation. I also draw on the concept of banal nationalism by Michael Billig (1995), which looks at the mundane use of national symbols and its consequences. I argue that while folk dance acts as a uniting device amongst members of national communities, its practice of everyday nationalism can also be transformed into a political ritual that accentuates differences and projects chauvinism and extreme nationalism with a potential for conflict
Espritu tasi/ The ocean within: Critical dance revitalization in the Pacific
No full textWork by Teaiwa (2008, 2012), Kaeppler (2004), Alexeyeff (2011), Mazer (2007), Royal (2008), Freeman-Moulin (2011) and Cruz-Banks (2009, 2010) highlights indigenous dance endeavours and predicaments from Aotearoa/New Zealand to Kiribati to Hawaii to Tahiti and the Cook Islands. Scholars examine the complex postcolonial, pan-indigenous, multicultural and diasporic contexts that provide windows into how people construct their identities and worldviews through dance. This paper takes a look at what is happening on Mariana Islands, located in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Specifically, this study looks at the island of Guåhan/Guam and the 2011 Chamorrro dance competition/Dinana Minagof and also engages in some of the broader questions and challenges relevant to the emerging Pacific Dance Studies field. Furthering the work of Flores (1996, 1999), this study is the first to examine specifically what dance revitalisation efforts reveal about contemporary Chamorro identities. In this preliminary dance ethnography, I explore the challenges of cultural revitalisation, share observations, comments, raise questions, and make some recommendations for (re)conceptualising Chamorro indigenous dance practices
Looking back: Dance education in schools
No full textThis article investigates significant issues in dance education in schools. The first section of this article begins with a reprint of an interview originally published in Dance News 33 (December 1985), the quarterly magazine of the New Zealand Dance Federation Inc. Raewyn Whyte interviewed dance educators Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury from Utah in the United States, who were visiting New Zealand as Fullbright artists at the time of the interview. Ririe’s and Woodbury’s experiences added to growing momentum in Aotearoa New Zealand for developing dance in schools and provided an opportunity for New Zealand educators to learn from others. In the second and third sections of this article, current teacher educators respond to the reprint of this interview as a ‘back issue’. Liz Melchior provides an overview of dance in schools over the last thirty years and particularly considers the development of dance education in the years following the introduction of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2000, 2007). Sue Cheesman offers reflections and insights into the challenges and successes of the new curriculum as it has been implemented into schools. Further consideration is given to the future of dance education, including specific issues relating to the role of artists working in schools
Reversing the ethnographer's lens: A reflection on the challenges and possibilities of doing 'off-shore' field research as a group
No full textIn this article I draw on the experiences of an ethnographic field trip to Kerala, South India, undertaken by myself and seven postgraduate students in January 2012. I will address questions arising from our perceived group identity in India, including that of our representation as a group of New Zealanders (from varied cultural backgrounds); our own sense of groupness; our presence and practice as a group of researchers in the field; and the pros and cons of travelling as a group. While each student was exploring an independent dance research topic and while each came from very different backgrounds, we were nevertheless travelling as an organised group and were therefore perceived as culturally homologous. Finally, I address the educational efficacy of doing field work as a group in general, its impact on the cohort being researched, and the learning outcomes for students. I suggest that this kind of trans-locational or situated learning experience can lead to heightened reflexivity and allow greater insight both for the students themselves and the culture they are researching