Cultural Dance in Australia: Essays on Performance Contexts Beyond the Pale

This book draws on theories of aesthetics, post-colonialism, multiculturalism and transnationalism to explore salient aspects of perpetuating traditional dance customs in diaspora. It is the first book to present a broad-ranging analysis of cultural dance in Australia. Topics include adaptation of dance customs within a post-migration context, multicultural festivals, prominent performers, historiographies and archives, and the relative positionings of cultural and Western theatrical dance genres. The book offers a decolonized appraisal of dance in Australia, critiquing past and present praxes and offering suggestions for the future. Overall, it underscores the highly variegated nature of the Australian dance landscape and advocates for greater recognition of amateur community dance practices. Cultural Dance in Australia makes a substantial contribution to the catalogue of work about immigrants and cultural dance styles that continue to be preserved in Australia. This book will be of interest to scholars of dance, performance studies, migration studies and transnationalism.

Jeanette Mollenhauer researches immigrants’ dance practices in Australia, focusing on cultural identity, transnationalism and multicultural performance. Jeanette is also Vice-President of Folk Dance Australia and a community dance teacher. She serves on the International Council for Traditional Music’s Archives Committee and her first book was Dancing at the Southern Crossroads (2020).