About Rheannan Port
Rheannan Port is a Lama Lama, Ayapathu and Kuku Yalanji woman with over 20 years of experience working within Indigenous arts and culture as a dancer, choreographer and educator. She is currently a Lecturer in Dance (Indigenous) at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development with a special interest in Indigenous dance pedagogy.
Publications
Brown, C., & Port, R. (2022). Body Time for Reckoning with Space and Place. https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/scholarlywork/1759289-body-time-for-reckoning-with-space-and-place
Video Transcript
How would you like to introduce yourself?
So, I belong to the Lama lama, Ayapathu and Kuku Yalanji people of Cape York Peninsula, and I’ve been living and working here in the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong and Boon wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation since 2008. Yeah, so it’s been a long way from home, but I found my place here as my new found home and where I get to live, learn and raise my children and, yeah, create a life with my family down here.
Can you tell us about your study and work as a dancer leading to doing your Masters?
I grew up in a small country town in the eastern part of Cape York Peninsula and it was very remote. So I did most of my primary school years there and then went away to secondary school. But I always had opportunities in my community to learn traditional dance. After I completed my secondary studies, there was an opportunity to join or audition for NAISDA Dance College, which stands for the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association, NAISDA Dance College in Sydney. I did a two-week audition in Sydney and then the following year joined to complete a certificate and a diploma of dance. So I did all my training as a late learner in dance, in contemporary dance at NAISDA in Sydney. From there, after graduating, I went on and joined Bangarra Dance Theatre. It was a company that I always wanted to get into and I spent four years with the company. So it’s been an interesting journey through dance. The unique thing about NAISDA and what they offer is that I didn’t have the opportunity to learn Western dance techniques in my home community and that was offered at NAISDA. So I got to train in jazz, ballet, modern, tap and different dance forms at NAISDA as well as traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and that’s the core component of NAISDA’s curriculum. It was at NAISDA where I really learned how to work with many different Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and nations and part of the program was that elders would come down from various communities, teach us their songs and dances and then through that experience we’d then go back to their communities whether it was an Aboriginal community or a Torres Strait Islander community and we got to present it back to the community the knowledge and culture that we learned at NAISDA at that time. So I really credit NAISDA for giving me the foundation of how to now negotiate the complexities of cultural knowledge within a contemporary dance space. After completing NAISDA, I actually as a student of NAISDA, I had the opportunity to have a small performing opportunity with Bangarra through the Sydney Olympics opening and closing ceremony as a volunteer at NAISDA and I got to do the awakening segment and then the closing segment with Christine Anu, Island Home. And so that was like an introductory to how Bangarra worked and then after completing NAISDA, I put an expression of interest to the artistic director at the time and was given a six-week secondment with the company and then in 2003 was offered full-time employment and I was with the company for four years at that time. I got to work under the direction of then artistic director Stephen Page, choreographer Frances Rings and cultural knowledge holder [… …] and as well as the other company members. So yeah, I was with the company for four years. I toured regional, metropolitan and also went on national and international tours. So that was a wonderful experiences. I got to perform in Hawaii, three islands in Hawaii, perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, New York, London. So yeah, it was a really exciting time and lots of like the great opportunity to perform stories from this place, this island, Australia and to take that internationally and to tell our stories in the way that we do through dance. Can you tell us about your other dance work? So after my time with Bangarra, I became an independent artist and that was quite a challenging time because through NAISDA and Bangarra you learn a particular way of moving and telling your stories and then as an independent artist you really have to interrogate what is your, what is your choreographic style or what is your way of telling stories. It took me a long time to really unlearn, particularly Bangarra’s dance technique and their way of storytelling in order to find my own. So I did a lot of, in Victoria, I did a lot of teaching back at students with and without dance training and I think it was through there that I really got a taste of how to really articulate what my practice was going to be or how it was going to be developed. So it was through going back to community, going back and working with just non-dance trained bodies to be really able to see how the body moves with the instructions and how can we respond to certain elements that is part of our cultural identity. And out of that, you know, I started getting an interest in studying. I also became a mother during that time of transitioning from professional dancer to then an independent artist and it was through the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development here at the Southbank Campus, Victoria College of the Arts that I, and through the graduate certificate in Indigenous Arts and Culture that I was able to work through the different elements of my dance artistry. So, yeah, it was that. That was a six-month block study. I completed that and that sort of gave me the tools also, the administration tools to support my independent dance identity. So for, you know, over the years, I did a lot of community work, worked at certain festivals with different community organisations here and elders and other artists from here. So one of those sort of other great opportunities for being an independent artist, I got to work with Short Black Opera on their work, Pecan Summer, which is a collection of First Nation artists, classical singers coming together to tell a story about, a story about Yorta Yorta people. And so I was invited by the artistic director, Professor Deborah Cheetham, and I got to be part of a opera, not as an opera singer, but as a dancer to support that production. So it was really, that was exciting. And, yeah, so there’s many different elders from various communities that invited me to work within their community and that has been both a privilege and a great opportunity. And to tell my story at the same time. And that sort of, having children and still wanting to be part of the dance community, that was a hard sort of space to navigate. And I found, you know, studying a master of fine arts dance by research enabled me to be a full time mum, but also I got to explore what my dance practice is. And my research question at the time was, how does my cultural identity inform my dance practice? So there was a real deep investigation of my three cultural identities and the intersection of where my dance training and practice came into it. So I spent two years exploring that and completed a master of fine arts in dance by research here at the Victoria College of the Arts. And my thesis is titled Aboriginal Contemporary Dance Practice: Embodying Our Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing. Through dance storying, almost forgot that. What are some of your approaches to choreography? Can you tell us about ‘embodied storying’? Absolutely. I think by research it gave me time and space to really look deeply into even our interpretation or our connection with the English language. And I found storytelling just didn’t sort of give the fluidity or the depth of intimacy that we as First Nation people have with our country and the elements that make up country for us, whether it’s land, sea, waterways, or sky. And so the word that I use was dance storying, and that was like more circular, as in there’s more ways in which that I could tell my story and it didn’t feel linear. And I feel like sometimes using the word storytelling, it’s very one direction and very speaking at, not with. And so with the words dance storying, that became how I felt my embodied knowledge and how I create and how I make was more aligned with that. So in my thesis you would have saw that, well there is a section there that I spoke to about old ways for new ceremonies. And that is a framework that I developed based on my knowledge and experience of looking at cultural knowledge and looking at traditional Aboriginal dance and the dance that I grew up learning from the old people. How, pretty much how do I place that cultural knowledge? How do I negotiate that cultural knowledge within a contemporary dance framework? And what are the negotiations that need to occur or happen? And for example, like I always use, is it my story to tell? And if it’s not my story, well that’s a start point. Like if it’s not your story, then what right do I have in telling that story? So and that’s what I think is important about dance making, choreographing is you really need to take time to research and take time to really listen to what, you know, what the stories need to be told through the embodied, my embodied knowledge. And so yeah, I look at whether it’s, whether the information that I’m about to share, is it supposed to be for private or public settings? Again, whose story is it? Is it my hereditary privilege to be accessing that information and then claiming it as my own? So really, there’s a very deep, sensitive process that I go through in creating works. And then, you know, using the contemporary dance framework, I can then create an abstract interpretation of my connection with place without having to cross over into knowledge that’s not really accessible or knowledge that’s not mine. So the contemporary dance framework I use is very, it’s something that I’m still working on, how I tell my like how I embed Indigenous knowledges into that particular way of choreographing and sharing of stories. But it’s very, and I learned that process when I was at NAISDA, and I learned that through Bangarra. And I’ve just found my way of telling my story. But it was through those two art organisations and college that I was able, I feel I’m now in a position to create and develop my way of telling story through where I am now, which is at the university.
Can you talk a bit more about how you bring cultural and contemporary dance together?
So here I’ve been here at the Victoria College of the Arts as a lecturer in dance for the past three years. My specialisation is Indigenous Pedagogy and Practice. I teach into the Master of Dance coursework. A subject that I developed is Body, Time, Space and Place and that looks at over the course of the semester that really looks at individuals who are enrolled in the subject to look at or to interrogate their personal and cultural identity as an inroad to their knowingness. And so I feel like I facilitate rather than lecture in that subject is facilitate how do they safely explore what their dance expression is going to be. And I also introduce cultural knowledge and we look at the historical, cultural, political and social events that have shaped the place that we perform. So we really look at it’s a very 360 perspective on dance from an Indigenous worldview and we work through how do artists or students enrol in that subject, how do they find their way of telling the stories that’s not only safe for themselves but safe for others and they’re taking the time to find what their practice is about. Are you planning to do a PhD? So I’m not yet enrolled in a PhD, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. I think there’s a part, sort of a journey or a thread that’s come through my masters that I feel like I could develop or build upon. So yeah, it is in the immediate future. So looking at either the year or the next year, 12 months or 24 months. So I’m about to see what my options are, but it will be in dance. It’ll be about cultural revitalization, education and healing. And so how that comes together in a PhD, I don’t know yet, but that’s how they’re my areas of interest.
How does your role at VCA work between the Wilin Centre and School of Dance?
So I work between VCA Dance for three days and then one day at the Willem Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development and yeah I don’t feel they’re two different roles. I get to speak about Indigenous dance pedagogy and practice in both of those spaces. Part of my role here in Leadership and Services is I mentor the First Nation students that are here in the undergrad and the Master of Dance course. So there’s also that connection I have with the students and also at the Wilin Centre I’m a lecturer in the subject Stories of Place which is a core component of the Victoria College of the Arts first year students studying a BFA here and that’s a subject that really explores stories of place from an Indigenous perspective and from the First Nation peoples of this place. So and that’s a subject through the Wilin Centre that I get to be part of and that’s for one whole semester. So every student in the Bachelor of Fine Arts in their first year will complete this subject in order to continue their studies here at VCA.
How are Indigenous Knowledges being integrated into dance pedagogy?
I think often I come to work and I think, “How amazing is this?” I get to be in a dance studio or get to be with colleagues who have come across the world. And at dance, we get to speak dance, we get to speak about dance making. It’s conversations about dance all day, every day here. And so there’s always this really vibrant, exciting time. And also sharing, like sharing is a big part of embedding Indigenous knowledges into the curriculum. And by doing it in a way that I feel culturally safe, but also for those who are learning from Indigenous dance practitioners and educators, is that what can be retransmitted or reproduced or being able to set those boundaries up as well through a pedagogical framework. So there’s lots of sharing, but in a safe space. And most of my dance workshops, or when I go into teaching, into the other modules here at the Victoria College of the Arts, is that I get to take the students also outside and we go to the Wilin Gardens and we really explore how it feels to like take off your shoes and connect with the grounds. And when we do connect with the ground, that space between our feet and the earth, who’s, you know, how do we acknowledge country in a way where it’s embodied and it feels deep, like it’s respectful and meaningful. And so really working outside the parameters of, you know, dancing within a traditional white dance space, taking students out and really connecting and responding to the environment is a core part of my teaching.
You have instigated some amazing opportunities for students beyond the studio. What are some of the effects these experiences are having on the students?
Absolutely. So I, here at VCA Dance, there’s an opportunity each year to develop and deliver different subjects within the Bachelor of Fine Arts and also in the Masters I just teach into the Body Time Space and Place. But over the years I had the opportunity to learn and develop the other subjects here. So this year recently I took a group of students over to Indonesia. So we went to Java Surakata Solar City and we got to work with a performing arts institute EC in Indonesia and we spent two weeks where students from VCA Dance through the Global Traveling Studio subject. They got to spend time with another institute and learn traditional Javanese dance and then it gave our students the opportunity to develop their pedagogy and teach the students in Indonesia. And then over that two-week period or week and a half we had there myself and another educator from EC college. We got to co-choreograph and collaborate on our student work and so that was really exciting working with a dance educator in Indonesia coming together and both sharing different experiences and knowledges of dance and both working together to merge our choreographic practices together and it was really good to work with to have that opportunity available but also to see how students are now learning to develop their network and their dance community not just here in Australia but elsewhere as well. So that was really exciting and also through the Master of Dance coursework the subject that I teach into we in the first year so it was the inaugural Master of Dance group we got to go to Yorta Yorta country on the Dookie campus and spent a one-week dance intensive there and so that was a really exciting moment too to see how students learn and respond to different Aboriginal nations and hopefully through the subjects that they take here at VCA that they get to learn how to approach and the right way in going and approaching community or dancing on country.
What opportunities does working within a university offer in relation to your own practice or praxis?
Absolutely. I think I’m going to forever be developing and understanding what my practice is. I think there’s also political factors, social factors that will also influence the direction of where my practice will go. I think it’ll be the PhD where I’ll allocate my time and energy to find a topic that I’m going to be interested in. I feel like the university, as an academic, researching is always going to be part of how I create and make work and how that will keep evolving my dance practice. Here and wherever it takes me.
What kind of impacts would you like your teaching and research to have going forward?
For me, it’s about creating opportunities. It’s about really encouraging independent dance artists, First Nation dance artists to consider coming through the academy and studying and seeing how the academy can also support their dance practice. Because it’s worked for me and being able to create pathways for First Nation dance artists to come through study and then to share and develop them as dance researchers going forward.
How did/do you manage living off Country so far away from your homelands?
Yeah, I find this is, I’m still grappling with the idea of on country, off country. I think for me, I am part of country whether I’m physically there or not, the way I speak, who I am, the way I move, my characteristics, all of me is part of country whether I’m physically on the lands of my Lama Lama, Ayapathu Kuku Yalanji ancestry or whether I’m on the other side of the world. I feel like I carry country in the way in which I embody and experience the world. The difference is, although I say in saying all of that, and I know that I’m not on the lands that is my, that I am away from home physically, it means that I’m just not a traditional custodian of the place where I am right now. The on country, off country question is always interesting. I think I would understand it or how I answer that is I’m just not a traditional custodian of the place where I meet today.
How do you approach teaching dance to young people?
I think being a dancer and a choreographer, every day I get to play and make up stories and I get to have fun. So I think often we overthink, as we get older we overthink and that blocks our creativity. So I always get students of all different ages to first play and remember to play in creating dance and to find joy in that. And through that joy I then set a task, I give the students a word and it could be tree, it could be rock, it could be waves. So I use words or elements in our surroundings that’s relevant to the students and that they can connect with. And then through that we workshop different ideas. So we look at different layers, we look at different heights, we look at different shapes that each of those different tasks that I set make or they look like. So I try to include or in that moment of interaction with young people, whether it’s an introductory to dance or they’ve had previous experience and opportunities to learn dance, I get them to take away skills for them to then create and make and become future choreographers where they can just use small little tools around them to build and to tell their story. So and that’s, I do that as well with the students I teach in the master’s level. It’s just giving them the tools and the skills to find their way of connecting to their surroundings and how, what is their relationship to certain elements within the environment. So it’s very similar, it’s just I work at a different pace and I use different languages to bring out the different ideas that I need the students to share. What I try to bring is, you know, ideas or again using elements around for them to find their connection, but I will share a story of how I’m connected with that particular element or so I do share what my story is and how I’m connected with that particular idea and then I then ask the students to then find their connection and it’s through that connection that I guide them through, you know, embedding cultural knowledge or bringing knowledge that’s specific to their family and tradition. So I find that it’s a two-way relationship in choreographing and developing content with young students.
What do you see as some of the most exciting Indigenous-led research underway in Australia now?
I think we’re very slow in picking this up, but a founding member of Bangarra Dance Theatre and my former teacher at NAISDA Dance College, Monica Stevens, started researching and completed a Masters in Digital Technology and Dance. I feel like digital technology is a fantastic media for our mob to tell our stories through dance. It’s really exciting to see where and how having access to digital technology where we can take dance practice to, whether it’s here in Australia or in different parts of the world where they’re very innovative with digital technology.