Dr. Jeanette Mollenhauer

Honorary Fellow (Dance), Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, 

The University of Melbourne, Australia.

A Lament

I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual female. I am mainstream—until I walk or Zoom into a gathering of Australian dance scholars, when my interests in culturally specific dance and the recreational folk-dance movement often result in raised eyebrows. Once, that would have been less likely to happen, but I will get to that shortly. The musings found here are animated by multiple sources apart from the personal experience already described. First, from literature that identifies a problematic hierarchy that is embedded in dance studies; second, from a historiographic survey of dance reports in Australian newspapers and websites; and third, from my personal experience as both recreational folk dance teacher and dance scholar.

The Shell Folkloric Festival (Sydney) and the Festival of All Nations (Melbourne) were popular events that featured immigrants’ dance and music groups.¹ Those festivals no longer happen. The former Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) had a Community Arts Board that addressed the needs of diasporic communities’ dance groups.² That Board no longer exists. By the mid-1990s, the performative and scholarly focus throughout Australia was on Western concert genres, especially contemporary dance. Nothing new about that, really; the same thing has happened in other places. 

The problem arises if you are a dancer or scholar whose interests lie elsewhere, as I am; there are no opportunities for us within dance faculties or organisations. I research the popular dances of diasporic communities-an awkward fit within Australian dance studies.³ I completed my PhD (yes, in dance studies) at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, so I’ve mixed with the nation’s top musicians. Conservatoria around Australia have ethnomusicologists, but dance faculties don’t typically have ethnochoreologists/dance ethnologists/dance anthropologists (whichever terminology you prefer). Conservatoria offer degrees in popular music; there are no degrees in popular dance. 

A Reflection

So, that’s the history; now for some theory. I met the late Professor Andrée Grau several times. I wish I could sit and discuss the Australian situation with her, because it echoes so many of her observations. Here is how I imagine our discussion would play out:

JM: The problem has been around for a while, Andrée. Ballet historian Cornelius Conyn gave a series of lectures in Sydney in 1955: tribal dance; folklore; ballet; modern.⁴ 

AG: Yes, Jeanette, that’s because ‘…most dance history books started with a chapter on “primitive” dancing, moved up the evolutionary ladder to “folk” dancing, then on to non-European “classical” forms, finally reaching the ultimate: Western theatrical dance! In these volumes, human progress is presented as a given—an unchallengeable “truth.”⁵

JM: A dance critic wrote that the Moiseyev Dance Company (Russia) and Ballet Folklorico de Mexico provided “theatricality with choreography to give us an insight into the culture from which the dances originated.”⁶ So, only trained dancers are able to interpret what’s being danced in a village somewhere? People in the village devised the dances- that makes them the experts on performance and interpretation of their own culture.

Moving to the present day, our dance faculties focus on contemporary dance- why would they do this unless they believe that is the most important of all dance genres? And, that contemporary dance appeals to everyone? Together with classical ballet, it now forms an impenetrable barrier; they have become the “movement systems against which other forms are defined and measured.”⁷  The term “dance” is even used (incorrectly) as a synonym for contemporary dance and classical ballet. There is a magazine called Dance Australia,⁸ but there’s not much in it about any other genre, apart from the occasional item about ballroom dance. My research participants have experienced this situation first-hand. I recently completed a project called “Teaching Dance in Diaspora” at The University of Melbourne.  I visited the dance groups of 10 diasporic communities and interviewed 13 teachers attached to those groups. So many of them said that they were surprised that someone from a dance faculty would be interested in them. Looking back, I now feel that this is the most important outcome of that project- that I established a connection between a faculty and these community dance groups. They might be amateur, but the teachers have a wealth of knowledge and experience.  I’ll show you some dancers at the end of our chat.

AG: The gulf between dance faculties and community dance groups really doesn’t surprise me. “Some dance forms are perceived as having an existence independent of the sociocultural backgrounds of the various individuals involved…[they] see their oeuvre examined in artistic terms and their work understood as somewhat ‘universal’ and ‘acultural.’ [The rest] see their work receive a ‘cultural treatment,’ linking it to narrow notions of heritage and tradition.”⁹

JM: Exactly. But it means there’s nowhere to go if your interests lie elsewhere. There’s no place for someone who specialises in Irish step dance or Bharatanatyam; if they want to pursue dance at university level, they have to spend their time doing contemporary dance. Or go to another faculty.

AG: I know! The situation in most places is that “in many institutions, students whose interests lie outside Western theatre/dance [tend]to be directed towards dance anthropology or sociology courses.”¹⁰

JM: Yes, sadly, that’s the situation. Now, I promised some examples of such dancers, and here they are!

Photo: Dimosthenis Manasis, Director/Instructor, 

MANASIS School of Greek Dance and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 2024.

Manasis is one of the teachers of amateur community dance groups whose wealth of knowledge and experience is not often brought into academic spaces. Photo courtesy of MANASIS School of Greek Dance and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 2024.

Some performances by diasporic dance groups in Melbourne

A Determination

I don’t believe in identifying a problem without offering some ideas about what can be done. So much has been achieved in the past few years in relation to diversity in dance. Don’t get me wrong, we still have a long way to go, but there has been greater recognition of diversity in relation to gender and sexuality, body shape, age, cultural heritage and physical and intellectual ability. We have seen all kinds of dancers on Australian stages who, even five years ago, may not have been offered the opportunity to perform in public. And I celebrate these achievements. 

Yet, there is another form of diversity that nobody seems to talk about. All of the characteristics I’ve just listed relate to who is dancing. What about the diversity of what they are dancing? Isn’t diversity of genre just as important as diversity of personnel?¹¹ The latest Arts Participation Survey shows that 3% of Australians practise contemporary, 3% street dance or hip hop, 2% social or competitive, 2% classical, traditional or folk, 1% classical ballet.¹² That’s a more even spread than our dance courses represent. There is so little space on performance stages or in university faculties for culturally specific genres, or hip hop, or swing. I could go on naming genres, but I think you see my point. Representing multicultural Australia should also mean acknowledging the presence of multiple dance styles that are practised by various sectors of the population. 

I hope that, just as dancers who are not white, heterosexual, able-bodied and minded, young or thin have raised their voices and yelled “what about us?”, my voice here will be heard by the people who are able and willing to offer the hand of alliance and inclusivity. This is just a chat, but one day soon, I hope to witness the beginning of movement towards equal opportunity for all the wonderful forms of dance that exist in Australia. Notice I said “towards”; can we please just make a start on this?

About the Author

Jeanette Mollenhauer has been a recreational folk dancer and teacher for several decades, and her two daughters were competitive Irish dancers. In 2017 she completed a PhD in dance studies at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. Since then, Jeanette has published widely on Irish dance in Australia, including a book (Dancing at the Southern Crossroads), book chapters (see the edited book, Irish Women in the Antipodes: Foregrounded) and academic articles in prominent journals such as Dance Research Journal, History Australia and The Journal of Intercultural Studies. She has also published works about Croatian dance, dance taxonomies, Australian calisthenics and recreational folk dance. She is an Honorary Fellow (Dance) at the Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, The University of Melbourne.

References