Dances from Aboriginal Australia, Australia

Photos from the Real AUSTRALIA

Dances from Aboriginal Australia

From the northern coast of Western Australia to northern Queensland and from the Tiwi Islands and Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory to Central Australia and beyond, each Aboriginal group has its own distinctive songs and dances. Many Aboriginal groups nowadays go abroad to show their culture to appreciative audiences all over the world. These include very traditional groups, from Central Australia or Arnhem Land among others, to urban Aboriginal groups from all over Australia performing contemporary dances that, however, still take their clues from traditional dances from various places.

Apart from the first two pictures on this page, that were taken at schools in the remote southwest and the far north of the Northern Territory, these are images from the Festivals of Pacific Arts, held every four years in a different location around the Pacific. Aboriginal dances are always very popular in those festivals, as they are completely different from those of the Pacific Islands. These photos were taken at the Pacific Arts Festivals in Tahiti (French Polynesia), Townsville (Queensland) and Rarotonga (Cook Islands).

Pitjantjatjara women of a tiny community in the north of South Australia, their upper bodies elaborately painted, performed their typical loose-knee shuffle dance, while dancers from the north of Western Australia danced with painted ceremonial objects while dancers from Arnhem Land and northern Queensland mimicked the way a kangaroo moves, accompanied by the sound of the "didjeridu", the famous dronepipe made from a hollow log. Although the didjeridu is uniquely from Arnhem Land and was, in the old days, used nowhere else, many urban Aboriginal groups that no longer perform their traditional ceremonies, have adopted it.

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