Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

“Contemporary Indigenous Australian Performance” traces the evolution of Aboriginal performance of the “Dreaming” from tradition to disruption to renewal as a postmodern combination of the old and the innovative. The original Australians, the oldest continuously surviving culture in the world, used song and dance to embody, communicate, and preserve the spiritual core of the “Dreaming,” a collection of creation legends that have long guided the First Inhabitants of Australia. The method of the study involves analysis of both Aboriginal “Dreaming” and its traditional expression in music and movement. The thousands of years of “Dreaming” performances, interrupted and nearly eliminated by some 200 years of British imperialism, have been re-imagined within the last fifty years. Indigenous artists have united traditional music and movement with contemporary Western styles of realistic play-writing, musical theater, and dance-theater. The result restores the prehistoric “Dreaming” performance tradition in combination with modern artistic forms in a uniquely postmodern hybrid. The implicit value of the study is the recognition not only of the resilience of the Australian Aborigines, but also of the importance of artistic creativity for cultural expression and continuity.