DescriptionSizeFormat
Publisher version (open access)11 MBAdobe Acrobat PDFView/Open

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/33576

Title
Dancing in the dust: a gendered history of indigenising Australian cultural identity
Author/Creator
Haskins, Victoria
Description
In 1954 an Australian ballet celebrating Aboriginality was presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the first reigning monarch ever to visit the continent. A dynamic American dancer Beth Dean both choreographed and danced the lead role of the ballet Corroboree: one young English woman watched another young, American, woman, play out the initiation of an Aboriginal youth, as a symbol of Australia’s distinctive culture and identity. As a performance transgressing boundaries of gender simultaneously with those of race and culture, Beth Dean’s performance of the Initiate is an episode in the history of Australian of Australian race relations that highlights an ongoing struggle by white women to exercise power through representing and speaking for Aboriginal people. A gendered reading of the white nationalist appropriation of Aboriginal identity shows that Dean’s Boy Initiate dances on a trajectory of white women claiming an authoritative voice on Aboriginality, stretching from the earliest colonial days and even to the present.
Relation
Intersections: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in Australasian Studies p. 54-75
Relation
http://www.asiabookclub.com/profile.html
Date
2007
Publisher
Prestige Books
Keyword(s)
Australasia;  sex role;  ethnicity;  race relations;  women
Resource Type
book chapter
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/33576
Identifier
ISBN:9788175511965
Language
eng
Full Text
Full Text
 
Image Thumbnail
160 Visitors 194 Hits 11 Downloads
Save/E-mail Citation
Citation Format
E-mail Address
Subject
"Dancing in the dust: a gendered history of indigenising Australian cultural identity"
 
OR