The Dancing Oceans Project is a unique collaboration bringing together four international First Nations dance training institutions – NAISDA Dance College, VOU Dance Fiji, the University of Auckland and the University of Papua New Guinea. It explores Indigenous approaches to learning, creativity and performance and tackles what it’s like being an Indigenous dance artist or trainer in these countries.
We got a chance to sit down with one of the creators, Nicholas Rowe to delve into the purpose behind the project, hear his thoughts on reshaping the narrative surrounding Indigenous dance within academia and understand what the future may look like for this space.
Nicholas is a graduate of the Australian Ballet School, holds a PhD from the London Contemporary Dance School and is currently a Professor at the University of Auckland. He has resided in Occupied Palestinian Territories working in refugee camps on dance projects with local artists. His academic publications investigate dance, creativity, collaboration and education in diverse cultural contexts.
Nic, you have quite the resumé – did you always know dance was going to be a big part of your future?
I was 17 when I began dancing. I first fell in love with ballet, but the environment I was in didn’t value difference. It valued conformity. But now that I had discovered dance, I knew it was the way I wanted to communicate with the world. I just had to figure out a different way of doing it. This led me on an odyssey of exploring community dance and dance in diverse corners of the world to understand why and how it’s so meaningful. It’s been a long journey.
Tell me a bit about the Dancing Oceans Project and how it came about.
I’m quite nomadic and I’ve enjoyed developing partnerships with people in varied locations, including those across the Pacific. We started talking about what we could explore that brings us together and lets us exchange ideas and came up with the Dancing Oceans Project.
The concept was born during COVID-19, so bringing students together wasn’t going to work. Instead, we got funding from UNESCO to make a film in each of the four locations to reveal with each other a bit about how we approach dance and Indigeneity. What does it mean to bring Indigenous dance, Indigenous teachers, Indigenous students into tertiary education? And that became the launching platform for the film.
Now that the pandemic is mostly behind us, I’m enjoying travelling around to each of the locations to pick up some additional footage to thread it together. I’m looking to create a cohesive narrative around how an Indigenous student approaching dance as a pathway in life is being addressed in different corners of the Pacific.
And what are your findings?
The main takeaway is that a tertiary dance program is a location to engage with other Indigenous students – where they get to consider who they are in the world through a medium that wants to embrace their culture. It’s different than joining other Indigenous students in an engineering subject where you’re just there to learn about engineering.
I’ve found that the individuals I’ve spoken to feel a kinship with their cohorts. Their peers help them learn about themselves. It’s less about the institute and what the teachers are doing, and more about what happens when you allow a group of like-minded people to gather and share their stories when they’re not used to being with people who are like them.
Dance is a very vulnerable, taxing, physical and committed journey. It can be a place where people feel they get a sense of belonging in the world and with other people. As a dancer myself one of my favourite things was not so much dancing for other people, but dancing with other people. When I get on stage, I loved being in a classical pas de deux or a more contemporary performance and just thinking, “I’m here with this person and we’re sharing something and it’s that relationship that matters”. Knowing that there is an audience watching us, for me, is ancillary to that process.
Do you notice the challenges in this space differ for each region?
All institutes are engaging with Indigeneity in such different and complex ways. In Australia, it’s about attending to a much more marginalised population and providing a place for them to feel a sense of solidarity and significance together as a community while they learn. In a place like Papua New Guinea, their struggles are identifying how a tertiary institution serves their Indigenous knowledge systems and the people within them. New Zealand has more of a mainstream association with its Indigenous population and yet it’s still trying to figure out how to integrate with non-Indigenous communities.
We can’t look for a one-size-fits-all approach to making Indigenous dance happen across the Pacific, but rather recognise there’s going to have to be millions of micro solutions developed.
You’ve recently been interviewing NAISDA graduates about their time at different stages of NAISDA’s history – what have you learnt?
One of the NAISDA interviewees mentioned the significance of coming into a room with lots of other Aboriginal people. They came from a rural Australian town and hadn’t been in a place where their learning had been immersed with other Indigenous people. It allowed them to create new relationships that they never imagined. They could let go of a need to feel they’re fitting into a system.
Another said it prompted him to go back and understand his own story and family history much more, and allow it to become part of him. He wouldn’t have explored that if he had pursued or studied a general tertiary subject.
It’s not about understanding what NAISDA is like as a place, but rather exploring what the students were like before they arrived – their hopes and aspirations and the challenges they faced as an Indigenous Australian seeking to advance their life in dance by coming to NAISDA.
What does the future of this niche learning space look like?
Actually, moving away from the idea that it is niche. Indigenous Australia isn’t niche. I grew up in Darwin and when you’re in the Community it doesn’t feel niche, it’s the future, it’s what needs to be attended to. And so, part of what we need to be shifting in a broader Australian consciousness, is not an idea that this is a minority but rather a big part of Australia that needs to flourish.
Central to that is foregrounding Indigenous research methods. So that when we’re looking and becoming reflexive in how we teach, what we teach, and who we teach, it’s informed by not only historic practices of Western academies but is revealing the endless possibilities that emerge from looking at this from an Indigenous world view.