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Accepted Paper:
From the ceremony ground to the stage: continuity and change in Warlpiri women’s yawulyu performances
Georgia Curran
(University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Warlpiri women's ritual songs are today performed in many different contexts including in festivals and on stages across Australia. In this paper, I explore the ways in which Warlpiri women refigure the performance of these song traditions to adapt to these new performance spaces.
Paper long abstract:
Over recent decades Warlpiri yawulyu singers and dancers have had opportunities to perform their ritual songs outside of traditional ceremonial contexts, in festivals and as part of broader arts-focused productions. Françoise Dussart has shown that distinct shifts in the purposes and values associated with yawulyu that have occurred since Warlpiri women first began to consider how to present yawulyu as evidence for land claims in the 1970s. In this paper, I examine some of the changes that have occurred across a five-decade period using Thomas Turino’s distinction of participatory versus presentational modes of performance (2008). This shift is not a straightforward or linear shift, but one framed by performance context. In this paper, I examine contemporary yawulyu performances to unpack the features that emerge when Warlpiri women consider how to present these ritual songs in these new spaces.
Dussart, Françoise (2004). Shown but not shared, presented but not proferred. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15(3): 253–266.
Turino T (2008). Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.