Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival Wrap Up

Haven’t blogged for a while. This has to be mentioned. Only last night have returned from Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival 2009. Having only presenting itself every 2 years, was fortunate enough to experience and be part of this Cultural and Diverse experience.

I heard about this Festival little while ago through my ongoing presence at Digger Street. As an option to support the festival in its actual sense, volunteering provided some amazing opportunity to come and meet large number of participants, organisers, visitors on the grounds and of course mingle among multi cultural volunteering crowd. While the festival was of Aboriginal nature, volunteering group was heavily consisting of large French nationals who either have lived in Australia for a while or had come here on a temporary working visa or holidays to experience Australia life for themselves. French weren’t the only ones who dominated diverse language scape; Germans, Spanish speaking tongues were among many that stood out also. There were Japanese and Swedish people too yet somehow they seemingly held more respect for the language that is dominating in this country, could this be an indication of something? I also happened to meet one lovely family from Moscow who were in Australia for the second time and truly were enjoying they time here and in particular the energy that North Queensland has. Was nice to meet them and catch up speaking Russian in our own Moscow accents,- I “still have it” they said! Yes!!

I had arrived with a group of volunteers on thursday and while majority of people were lazing about as to what is going on, my experience told me to take the fist opportunity and learn about current “Gate” system and learn as much about it. 7 hours later, I was tired doing pretty long shift yet had managed to build system which would handle most resolutions in matter of seconds and minutes. Few personal notes were made on how to run gates better eg. As anyone could imagine, whenever you deal with such event where participants come together to celebrate they own culture and tradition and they come in numbers, it would be nice to have lists for all of them known to those that work the gate for the shift from very start.

Following morning I did the gates as well, yet primarily most of the work at the ticket office was done by a combo of 2 Germans and 1 Belgium girl while I was greeting people and distributing the tickets to all visitors to Laura site in they respectable vehicles as per appropriate performance or observation.

After those long shifts I had completed my volunteering hours and was left to spend time seeing the festival grounds and catching up with friends, chatting up volunteers….etc Met some interesting people along the way, heard some stories, caught up with Jeremy’s family and his friend from Odessa/Sydney – Illya (Another Russian Speaking chelovek who has a great sense of humour and can play numerous musical instruments.) had spoken to some Traditional Land Owners, Questioned our Reality and Playfulness of Words in our Language, had a swim in the river, did yoga, had some cold, spokn to cute german bakpakkers abt fonts, ya! and generally had great experience.

I would also like to mention the Dance and Cultural Difference of the festival itself. As far as cultural Aboriginal traditions and customs are concerned, they presence is a lot more in tune with nature and animals while holding utter respect for its elders. This places itself in overall balance between one of the oldest cultures and one of the youngest cultures that makes up Australia population. The difference stands out very strongly.
Simplicity and Minimalism of the performance while adding encompassing dimensions to through the sound complexities of didgeridoo and sharp hits of a wooden sticks were heavily highlighted by vocal arrangement describing the definition of the action that was acted out by family troop living the re-enactment through the dance. Majority of dances had to do with Animal life, Interaction with Animal life, Food gathering, Sometimes that Food gathering has to do with Animal Life , Nature, Relation of Nature and Animals, People and Nature balance while also touching up on some elements of Trauma that at times was experienced, such as disputes, war, embracing masculinity and femininity and its balance and so on.

As the festival went on for a number of days, I had learned about most of dances and movements and some of the painted symbolism that they used. Understanding the dance fundamentals to some extend, its wasn’t hard to put most structural foundations together. This is just an observation point as far as comparing Aboriginal Native dancing styles with say complexities of Contemporary. Majority was very straight forward.

Food. Food for me at the festival was below the average. I had expected slightly larger variety for a 5000 people festival. While completely disregarding anything of that you find resembling food at Show ground festivities, there wasn’t much else left to choose, and so for most of the time I had drank tea to wash off the dust that was a plenty.

There was a strong emphasis on Government (lat: guvern = control ment= mind) organisations of all sorts that easily dominated throughout the grounds. Make up your own opinions on what you think of this.
Heard amazing sounds from this musical instrument called HANG. Very rare to some extend with only very few made worldwide and long wait list for those that want it. Sounds amazing!

Sunday afternoon I returned home and now in prep mode for Bush week.