Weaving the Map
By Dirk HR Spennemann
30 Aug 2009
Photos: Dirk HR Spennemann Text: Julia Mage'au Gray and Dirk HR Spennemann
With their Salt Water Feet they
Explore the Pacific
and find Bad Coconuts amongst Working Women.
They shun the Crabs in the Bucket
and realize that Together they are Better.
Sunameke is a Darwin (Australia)-based multi-cultural dance group that shares their special brand of Pacific Island Performance reflecting their Pacific Australian heritage. The performance Weaving Our Map explores through dance Sunameke's connections in Oceania. It reflects upon who they are and how these old dances still have relevance to them as part of the Oceanic Diaspora, weav their dances to make their own map.
Translation and Collaboration is a natural and essential part of the process in how Sunameke works. The members of Sunameke are from varied Pacific Backgrounds: Papua New Guinea, Samoa, New Zealand, Tonga, and Kiribati. Their method of working centres on directives and creating movement based in traditional styles of Pacific dance. They learn and study dances from their places of origin and recreate, develop and perform these dances for themselves and their audiences
The images shown here are all no-flash photography shot in low light conditions. They were taken during the Sunameke performamce at the dinner of the 2008 conference of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies (AAAPS), hosted by the Papua New Guinea High Commission, Canberra on 19 April 2008.
For details on the group: Sunameke Productions, www.sunameke.com, Director Julia Mage'au Gray.
4 responses
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Dirk HR Spennemann added a link (30 Aug 2009):
And here's an active link to the Sunameke webiste (www.sunameke.com)
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Mary Brown gave props (31 Aug 2009):
I enjoyed your story very much and would love to have seen the dances. When I lived in Hawaii, I would often go to the Polynesian Culture Center just to watch the dances. Thank you for a very interesting story & your nice photos.
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Greg Adams gave props (4 Sep 2009):
Excellent story and photo series!
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Dirk HR Spennemann gave props (4 Sep 2009):
Thanks for the comments and votes, Mary and Greg
