Cirrus@Austlit

'Mid-twentieth-century concert dances by non-Indigenous Australian choreographers frequently appropriated Aboriginal Australians’ image and cultural practices in an imbalanced cultural exchange, and yet dance scholarship construes non-Indigenous Australian-authored ‘Aboriginality’ as respectful veneration of Aboriginal Australia. Through a historiographical review of dance scholarship on Terra Australis (1946) by Edouard Borovansky and Corroboree (1954) by Beth Dean, this article challenges speculation about the non-Indigenous Australian choreographers’ good intentions and the positive outcomes of their pursuit of ‘national identity’ (by way of ‘Aboriginality’). Moreover, the article seeks to unsettle dance scholars’ nationalistic, teleological view of dance history in Australia, which discursively and narratively links non-Indigenous Australian concert dance on Aboriginal Australia to the ‘emergence’ of Indigenous Australian concert dance – from ‘blackface’ to Bangarra Dance Theatre – and lays claim to Indigenous Australian dance practices. The author argues that uncritical dance scholarly discourse on cultural appropriation and racialised representation has a negative impact on Indigenous Australian dancers and choreographers today, because the very concepts of ‘Aboriginality’ and ‘Indigenous Australian concert dance’ are used to further marginalise Indigenous Australians.'  (Publication abstract)