A DANCE troupe promoting physical literacy visited two schools in Robinvale to teach cultural dances to students.
All year levels at Robinvale College and St Mary’s School were given an instructor from the Nikki Visaj Movement, who taught them either Italian, Greek, Korean pop, Indigenous Australian hip hop, Bollywood, Indigenous Polynesian or African dances.
Instructor Dagogo Obogo said the program is about introducing students to, and engaging them in, culture.
“The main purpose of this is for kids to learn about cultures and dances that are alien to them, that they are not used to seeing, or that they have not been not exposed to,” Mr Obogo said.
“It helps build resilience, it helps them create cultural awareness and respect for traditions of old, long time ago, and how all these dances came about.”
Attempting to not play favourites, he admitted the preps at Robinvale College impressed him the most with their enthusiasm for Bollywood dancing.
“They started in the morning and they nailed it,” he said.
Choreographer Sermsah Bin Saad, who taught Indigenous Australian hip hop, said students were encouraged to get creative, to imitate animals and scream during parts of the performance.
“I don’t like to say its performative, I like to think of it more as ceremonial,” Mr Bin Saad said.
“We gather in circle, a lot of the times we gather as mob, we come to circle to show connection with each other and to also be on the same level with each other and to share our stories.
“It’s really about connecting into the elements of the earth, because obviously without the elements of the earth, we have no life.”
He said schools embrace the dances and the teaching of the rainbow serpent journey, which helps students understand totemic representation and connection to country.
“We add the elements of their own totemic representations as well,” Mr Bin Saad said.
“I use the embodiment from myadarra jallarmarra, the pelican (in Nykina language, from the West Kimberley region).
“There’s a lot of the parallels of this work in accordance with connecting to spirit, connecting to self and to others as well in community.”
