The Dancing Picture - The Ritual Dance of Native Australians

Authors

• Monica Engelhart Stockholm University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67224

Keywords:

Dance, Religious, Indigenous peoples -- Australia, Ritual, Rites and ceremonies, Performing arts, Australian Aborigines, Singing, Music, Mythology, Australian (Aboriginal), Body, Human

Abstract

What kind of message does -or did — the dance convey to the Native Australians? Several types of communication can be distinguished in ritual dance. There is the narrative aspect, i.e., the dramatization of a myth, or of certain social relations, there is an aspect of explanation, i.e., the visual performance of significant conditions, an expressive aspect of worship, and even an aspect of transmission, as when the body of the dancer is thought to mediate divine power to the audience. When a dancer is considered possessed, the boundaries between his human identity and the divine are wiped out. This last aspect leads us to the second item of interest regarding the ritual dance in Australia, an issue that has been discussed at length regarding masked dancers in other societies, i.e., the question of whether the dancer is identified with the being represented, or merely performs as an actor in a play. In this discussion, the very technique of dancing may have some explanatory faculty, at least as long as we are dealing with Native Australian ritual dance.