UDC: 793.31:314.15
     37.091.3:793.31(94)
COBISS.SR-ID 163952137

Received: Apr 10, 2024
Reviewed: Aug 15, 2024
Accepted: Nov 08, 2024

#6 Teaching Dance in Diaspora: Pedagogical Experiences in Melbourne, Australia

Jeanette MollenhauerFaculty of Fine Arts & Music, The University of Melbourne, Australia[email protected]

Citation: Mollenhauer, Jeanette. 2025. "Teaching Dance in Diaspora: Pedagogical Experiences in Melbourne, Australia." Accelerando: Belgrade Journal of Music and Dance 10:6

Conflict of Interest: The author has no conflict of interest to declare

NOTE: There is no ethnochoreologist working in paid employment in any Australian dance faculty (the author is an Honorary (unpaid) Fellow).

Abstract

A study of culturally specific dance following relocation to a novel and vastly different environment addresses issues that are salient to both migration research and dance studies. This paper addresses the situation faced by culturally specific dance groups in Melbourne, Australia, through the recently completed ‘Teaching Dance in Diaspora’ project. Ten dance groups from disparate socio-cultural backgrounds have been visited, with 13 dance teachers being interviewed. Collected data reveal the connections and collisions of experience among participating groups and individual pedagogues. All groups were amateur, but while some had their operational costs supported through fundraising efforts and/or corporate sponsorship within the diasporic community, others relied on tuition fees alone. Available choreographic and pedagogical support from respective homelands also varied: in turn, this often determined group structures and practices in Melbourne. Yet, every group maintained a remarkable program of performances at both diasporic community celebrations and regionalized multicultural festivals. Lamentably, another common factor was the experiential marginalization of the groups by government departments and arts bodies that privilege Western theatrical genres. Principally, the project reveals the nuanced and multi-faceted nature of negotiating and embodying post-relocation cultural identity through the lens of dance, both within the relevant diasporic group and to the broader populace. However, it also demonstrates the precarities faced by diasporic community dance groups in Australia.

Keywords:

migration, diaspora, transnationalism, Australia, pedagogy, choreography, community, funding

Introduction

Pedagogical Experiences in Melbourne, Australia

Studies of culturally specific dance in diaspora generally focus on one community, as demonstrated in Andriy Nahachewsky’s work on Ukrainian dance in Canada (2012), or Fernanda Duarte’s (2005) examination of Brazilian dance in Australia. Texts examining multiple communities’ dance groups are rare, although Anthony Shay’s (2006) monograph addresses the post-migration context for numerous amateur and professional troops in the United States. Additionally, the focus is either on choreographic adaptations that may emerge in the new geography, or on the ways in which dance is employed to construct and negotiate personal and communal cultural identity. Specific attention is paid to the situation for teachers, as this article includes perspectives from a number of diasporic communities in Melbourne with a particular emphasis on teachers’ experiences and, as such, it breaks new ground. The article also addresses a neglected area in Australian dance studies: relatively little attention has been given to culturally specific genres, or indeed to any amateur dance practices. Instead, Australian scholars attend to the professional sphere, which features Western theatrical genres such as contemporary dance. This Occidental focus reflects the composition of dance faculties in this country: whereas Conservatoria of Music feature ethnomusicology, there is no ethnochoreologist working in paid employment in any Australian dance faculty. Thus, the article offers an important corrective to this imbalance.

The article opens with discussion concerning the notion of ‘diaspora’ per se, before moving on to address some choreographic issues in the homeland context. Next, it provides an historical overview of performances by diasporic dance groups in Melbourne. This background information is then supplemented by an account of the research methodology, before results and concomitant discussion are presented.

Reflections on Diaspora

Over the past thirty years, scholarly interest in the notion of diaspora has blossomed. Two of the original philosophers in this field, William Safran (1991) and James Clifford (1994) developed definitions that required three characteristics: exodus from a common former homeland, an unsettled experience in a new land that is unwelcoming, and a collective belief that returning to the former homeland is both immanent and advantageous. As time has progressed, scholars have understood that these characteristics may not always be evident. In particular, it is acknowledged that migrants can and do become comfortable in their new environment and make no plans to return to the former homeland except for holidays or special events.

Diasporic communities should not be viewed as homogeneous. Ramnarine (2007b) believes that the term ‘diaspora’ implies an ongoing association with the homeland, which may be assumed, often incorrectly, to continue indefinitely through subsequent generations. Brubaker (2005) is concerned about the essentialism, which, he argues, has arisen through misguided and inappropriate application of the word. He states that genetic ties to a former homeland are inadequate: not everyone adopts ‘a diasporic stance’ (Brubaker 2005, 12) following immigration. Hall (1990, 235) writes that:

diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference.

The transformative and fluid nature of post migration identity is further underlined by Clifford (1994, 306), who describes how, through changing circumstances, diasporic experiences of both individuals and groups may be altered, producing a ‘constellation of responses to dwelling-in-displacement.’ Additionally, the experience of living in a diasporic community brings change:

life in the diaspora inevitably changes people…there will be, inevitably, shifts of consciousness, perceptions and values (Duarte 2005, 328).

Thus, for migrants who have lived in their adopted homeland for many years, and for children of migrants, whose only life experience is of the location chosen by their parents, cultural identity may be constantly negotiated and renegotiated, and may even become a highly contested construct. Many scholars have proffered ways of understanding the shape-shifting nature of post-migration identity. Duarte (2005, 319) writes that:

home is simultaneously in the present as the host country, and in the past as the country of origin.

He also employs Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, concluding that:

the creation of special spaces that remind diasporic individuals of their homeland can be said to fulfill the important function of maximizing their habitus; of making them feel “at home” in the diaspora (Duarte 2005, 323).

Nira Yuval Davies (2006) refers to the idea of ‘multiscalar citizenship’ when observing the multiple transnational connections possessed by individuals and communities, while ethnomusicologist Tina Ramnarine (2007b) employs the term ‘calibration’ when describing adaptations made within a new socio-geographical context. More recently, anthropologist Ghassan Hage (2021) has introduced the notion of ‘lenticularity’: a lens presents a different picture depending on the angle at which it is held, and in the same way, a post-migration individual looks at life in varying ways depending on the surroundings, activities undertaken, and individuals with whom that person mingles at a given time.

When a group of immigrants who have originated in one locale come together (for whatever purpose) in the receiving society, their activities often involve language, traditional arts, sport or food. Hickman (2012, 41) explains that such spaces are:

zones of interaction that are inflected by memory and imagination as well as the materialities of migration.

By analyzing the nature and purpose of the various spaces in which members of a diasporic community have some function, greater understanding of the resettlement experience may be achieved, since:

diaspora spaces focus on the creation of new social relations and identifications in terms of the specificities of those encounters, origins and identities (Hickman, 2012, 23).

These spaces are locales for the nexus of the past (in memories), the present (a new geographical location) and the future (networks and identities). They provide a new way of viewing the immigrant experience:

to understand diaspora as a space of belonging challenges knowledge about identities, cultures, hybridities and, above all, diaspora as only being about displacement (Ramnarine, 2007a, 10).

Thus, in this study, each dance group represents:

diasporas [that] are neither discrete nor preformed, but function as historically and politically produced formations that are emplaced, embodied, interactive and performative (Gilbert & Lo, 2010, 156).

The Performative/Participatory Dichotomy in Homeland Contexts

As this project includes dance groups from diverse origins, some consideration of the choreographic context in various former homelands is salient. Nahachewsky (1993) notes that dance can be broadly categorized into performative iterations, often presented on a proscenium stage for an audience that has paid for tickets, and participatory events in which any observer can become a dancer, joining the formation and following along with the steps. Some of the nations represented in this study have National Dance Ensembles, and this tradition certainly influences not only the steps and styles, but the positioning of the groups within the performative/participatory dichotomy and may also determine the nature of homeland support for dance groups in the diaspora.

The nations of Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia (while the nation is officially designated North Macedonia, the participants from that nation choose to refer to it as ‘Macedonia’ and so I keep the same terminology out of respect for them), Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine each have their own dance and music troupes, developed from the national dance tradition established by Igor Moiseyev in Russia in the early twentieth century. Moiseyev was asked to organize a folk-dance festival in 1936, and in 1937 he drew on festival participants, along with artists from the Bolshoi Ballet, to establish his own ensemble. The Moiseyev Ensemble was a professional company: the dancers all had years of ballet training, and they presented traditional dances collected from across the former USSR in a highly stylized form. Anthony Shay (2002) describes how these national ensembles receive government support, being the official public representatives of the nation’s folkloric traditions. In this project, the presence of a national ensemble in the homeland is significant, because it usually means that assistance for diasporic dance groups is more readily available.

Diasporic Dance in Melbourne: A Brief Historical Overview

The ‘European’ settlement of Australia began with the arrival of the group of ships known as the ‘First Fleet’ in 1788, which was largely an Anglo-Celtic event. However, diversification of the non-Indigenous population increased slowly during the nineteenth century, and then much more rapidly throughout the twentieth century. For example, Croatian immigrants first came to Australia in the 1800s, because of the poverty, cultural and political repression under Austro-Hungarian rule, and to avoid three-year obligatory military service in Austria (Šutalo 2004; Balch 2008), then, along with many others, during the period known as the ‘gold rush’ in the mid nineteenth century, when many came to seek their fortunes in the gold mines.

After World War Two, there were many who came to Australia as displaced persons, often seeking escape from the communist influence which had settled over their home region (Šutalo, 2014). In the case of Croatia, there were those who opposed the communist regime, and those who Yet others emigrated as their assets were confiscated; they had been accused of collaborating with the Ustasa regime during WW2 (The Wiener Holocaust Library, 2024). A second wave migrated in the 1960s because of high unemployment in the former Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Australian government scheme designed to attract skilled workers from Europe to fill the labour shortage in Australia (Budak and Lalich, 2008). Thus, migration patterns of any given diasporic community are determined by numerous factors in both the sending society and Australia as the adopted homeland.

Since the Second World War, immigrant communities’ dance and music groups have featured in a number of public cross-cultural events. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) organized a ‘Fair of All Nations’ held at the Melbourne Town Hall in June 1946. At the event, the Russian and ‘Jugoslavian’ [Yugoslav] communities’ dance groups performed (‘YWCA’s All Nations Fair opens tomorrow’, The Herald, 18 June 1946, 10.)

The Argus reported on a gathering of immigrants from Lithuania in 1950, noting that as well as Lithuanian dances, the attendees also performed ‘foxtrots and modern waltzes’, the styles commonly found in the public dance halls of the era (‘Migrants twist and twirl in Grasshopper dance’, The Argus, 9 January 1950, 5.)

Alluding to their hybrid identities, one dancer was reported as saying that:

we say we are new Australians, so that’s why we want to dance Australian. That does not mean, though, that we will ever forget the beautiful dances of our homeland.

Public performances, especially the idea of a multicultural festival, also became more common from the mid-twentieth century onward. A 1950 concert in the Melbourne Town Hall was an event with paid tickets that featured over 100 people from the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Yugoslav and Russian communities, and raised funds for the Association for the Advancement of the Blind (‘Migrants’ concert for blind’, The Argus, 13 March 1950, 5.).

The suburb of Heidelberg, Melbourne, held a ‘New Australian Australia Day’ in 1953, at which:

migrants of some eight nationalities, dressed in national costume, will present folk dances of their homelands. ('Australia', The Age, 22 January 1953, 2.)

From the 1960s and especially following the adoption of multiculturalism as federal government policy in 1973 (Keddie 2014), the multicultural festival gained popularity. In Sydney, the Waratah Festival was held annually in the city’s Town Hall, and in 1965, the program featured ensembles from nations such as Poland, Latvia, French Tahiti, the Philippines, China and Serbia Sydney (Waratah Spring Festival Program. Papers of Victor Carell and Beth Dean MLMSS 7804, Series 4, Box 32 Folder 2, State Library of New South Wales).

Running for some twenty years at the same venue, from the 1973 opening of the Sydney Opera House, The Shell Folkloric Festival has become the nation’s most prestigious multicultural dance and music event (See Papers of Victor Carell and Beth Dean MLMSS 7804, Series 4, Box 25 Folder 3, State Library of New South Wales).

In Melbourne, the Festival of All Nations was conceived in the inner northern suburb of Fitzroy (Kapetopoulos 2010). Initially underwritten by the Fitzroy City Council, it eventually attracted funding from both the Victorian and federal governments. Later, Kapetopoulos explains that this Festival, too, managed to secure funding from the Shell Oil Company. However, along with the Shell Folkloric Festival in Sydney, maintaining the Festival of All Nations eventually became prohibitive, and Kapetopoulos (2010 ,5) ascribes the demise primarily:

to the uncomfortable relation between the arts and folklife in Australia.

Currently, multicultural festivals have an active presence in Melbourne and surrounding areas. The annual Pako Festa, held in Geelong, has operated since 1983 and claims to be the ‘largest free multicultural street party’ in Victoria (Visit Melbourne, 2024a). The Kaleidoscope Festival is spread across ten weeks and celebrates the various diasporic communities in Point Cook, Melbourne (Visit Melbourne, 2024b). There are also mono-cultural events, such as the annual Antipodes Festival held in Melbourne’s CBD, that celebrates the city’s large Greek community and features many of the Greek dance and music troupes from across Melbourne’s suburbs (Antipodes Festival 2024).

Methodology

The Teaching Dance in Diaspora project was undertaken with approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee at The University of Melbourne (Approval Number 2023-26671-40679-5). A list of potential participating dance groups was compiled through a Google search for groups belonging to various diasporic communities in the Melbourne region (including Geelong). Groups were contacted by sending a Letter of Introduction either by email or through Facebook messenger, as some maintain a Facebook page only, rather than a website. Ten dance groups agreed to participate, from the Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek (two groups), Italian, Macedonian (two groups), Polish, Slovakian and Ukrainian communities. It was not the researcher’s intention to conduct a Eurocentric project, but a researcher has no control over the granting or withholding of consent by those approached about participation, so the researcher simply worked with whichever groups indicated willingness to be involved. All of the groups are amateur; dancers are not paid for a performance, although sometimes event organizers pay a small honorarium to the group as a whole. Each group is solely devoted to the dance genres belonging to the respective places of origin.

Ethical approval was granted for one class visit and an interview with the dance teacher(s) of each group. Group contacts (which were sometimes the teacher; other times, a committee member) were provided with a Letter to Students that informed class members of the researcher’s intended visit, explained that the researcher was not there to assess, but simply to observe, and that the main research tool would be a one-to-one interview with the group’s teacher. Thirteen teachers were interviewed; one group has two teachers who participated in a joint interview, while another group has three teachers who were interviewed separately. Interviews of 30-45 minutes were conducted either in person or on Zoom. Audio recordings of each interview were transcribed and subsequently examined using thematic analysis, a method chosen due to its ability to:

identify patterns within and across data in relation to participants’ lived experience, views and perspectives, and behavior and practices (Clark and Braun 2017, 297).

Group Demographics and Locations

Some groups have long histories, with two of them having been established in the 1950s, while others have formed more recently; the two newest groups began in 2019 and 2020 respectively. There is considerable variation in group structure among the participating communities. In size, they range from a small group of 15-20 adults to a school with over 700 dancers spread across three Melbourne locations. One of the Macedonian groups, along with the Slovakian and Italian ensemble groups has only one class, for adults. The Bulgarian group features a small number of children (aged 10 and over) dancing with adults. The remaining groups have separate classes for children and adults; some have multiple children’s groups, divided by age.

In terms of cultural heritage of group members, all but the Italian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian groups consist exclusively of dancers who have at least one parent who is a member of the relevant diasporic community. The Bulgarian group has one member of Anglo-Celtic ancestry, but who is a good friend of one of the group’s teachers. The Italian class has several dancers who have no Italian ancestry, but simply enjoy the dancing. The Ukrainian group has the most dancers who lack the relevant cultural heritage, but this has resulted from the more stylized nature of Ukrainian dance, with ballet training being part of the troupe’s program.

Three types of venue are used for dance classes. Some groups have access to a hall that is part of premises belonging to the diasporic community. The Croatian, Polish and Slovakian communities have their own Clubs, equipped with commercial kitchens, and capable of hosting events with several hundred attendees. Thus, these dance groups have minimal hall hire costs, and insurance would be covered by the Clubs’ policies. The Bulgarian group meets in the hall attached to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which also means low venue costs. The Greek groups and one of the Macedonian groups use community halls that are administered by the relevant local council. While Councils offer lower rates to community groups, they still need to pay around AUD$30 per hour for hall hire.

Finally, the other Macedonian group and the Ukrainian group practise in existing dance studios, the hire of which is more than what a municipal hall would cost. For the Ukrainian group, who undergo barre training for an hour before launching into a two-hour class, the facilities provided by a large Western theatrical dance studio are ideal. The Macedonian group uses a smaller studio without such equipment, but in a convenient location. All group members pay fees, but most troupes (except the Ukrainian dancers and one Greek dance school) simply pay a modest term fee. Excepting the Ukrainian teacher and one Greek pedagogue, teachers are not paid for their time in choreographing and teaching.

The Teachers

The teachers who were interviewed were aged between mid-twenties and early fifties. They shared a common factor of having been involved in the relevant dance genre since early childhood. Some have continued without a break since then, such as Sarah (each participant has been assigned a pseudonym), who related that ‘I was born in Bulgaria and dancing from five years old, so all my life I was dancing, basically.’ Others described having moved away from dance for some time before returning and subsequently fulfilling the teaching role:

I started dancing when I was about 5 years old, and I danced again with a small group. Then I joined into the teenage group till about 14, and then we lost some teenagers and things like that, so I had a bit of a break for about 4 years [...] When I was 18, we tried to form back another group with adults. And I'm, what, 25 now, so actively dancing for that period of time, but in this main group for 7 years. (Jacob)

There has not been any formalized training for any of the participants. Most related that they underwent an apprenticeship style of teacher education, although several indicated that they were asked to teach because they were the most proficient dancers and, accordingly, were able to retain steps and motifs. Several others had established the groups they teach, and thus are self-appointed pedagogues. None of them possess tertiary dance degrees or any other certification (such as provided by the Royal Academy of Dance) that is ‘recognized’ within the broader dance community.

Performances

The kinds of performances undertaken by diasporic dance groups suggest a categorical dichotomy. First, there are events within the relevant immigrant community, designed to foster and strengthen cultural ties with the ancestral heritage, and second, public events at which the dance group represents their indigenous customs for a poly-cultural audience. Each group in this study performs in both contexts, although there is some variation in how often they present their choreographic works in either situation.

Intra-community events usually focus on religion, cultural nationalist celebrations, such as independence days, or a combination of the two see video. Emma’s group does ‘a whole hosting of events here in the Polish House as well to connect with the Polish community’, while Jane spoke about ‘the Croatian national day’ and ‘specific saint days’ along with ‘a few performances for the Victorian School of Languages for their Croatian graduations’ and Sarah referred to ‘24th of May, which is the Bulgarian day of the Cyrillic alphabet and Slavic culture, so we performed.’ Gary added that ‘you have a lot of smaller groups, like small church groups, who will have their parish and that parish's annual dance.’

Cross-cultural events can be either mono or multi-cultural. Some communities have a public event under the auspices of a local government. For example, the Polish ensemble performs at ‘the annual Polish Festival at Federation Square [in central Melbourne] and that's been going on for about 19 years now’ (Emma). The Antipodes Festival, as described earlier, celebrates Melbourne’s Greek community and both of the Greek dance groups perform there each year.

Two prominent multicultural festivals are Melbourne’s annual Moomba Parade, held each March, and the Pako Festa in Geelong, a city about an hour’s drive southwest of Melbourne. The Moomba Parade had its 70th birthday in 2024 (although the parade itself was cancelled due to extreme heat) and as discussed previously; diasporic dance groups have a long participation history. This year, the Bulgarian, Ukrainian and one Greek group had planned to participate. Pako Festa (2024) also has a parade along with various stages on which groups can perform.

The National Multicultural Festival (2024), held in Canberra, is the largest event of its kind in Australia and provides another opportunity for the groups in this project to represent their communities. Other multicultural festivals are curated by one diasporic community that then invites other communities’ dance groups to participate. The war in Ukraine has engendered much sympathy from other immigrant communities, and Emma told me that ‘we were invited to a lot of events last year to support the Ukrainian groups in terms of charity, galas and things like that.’ Other events are more celebratory:

Recently we had there was like an Indian festival down here in Laverton so a lot of it comes from, I guess, multicultural events and other people inviting us because when you do have like the Macedonian group or say the Indian group that actually had other dance groups or singing groups and things like that (Jacob).

One of the Greek groups has organized several large-scale multicultural events, describing it thus:

In 2008 [...] we started the first, what was called the Multicultural Folkloric Dance Concert [...] which was an extension, basically of my father's two first solo concerts in the country, the folkloric dance concerts, the east stages of dance School in 1988 and 1989. I then staged my first one in 2006 as a folkloric dance concert, highlighting different regions of Greece at the same venue of the Dallas Brookes Hall back then in Melbourne (David).

Spatial constraints preclude discussion of the merits and disadvantages of multicultural festivals; however, the author has made the observation that the continued willingness of the interviewees and their troupes to be involved in such events is evidence that the performers view the festivals as positive and productive. This conclusion is supported in other research projects. A Serbian dancer who performed in the 'Mix It Up' initiative (a partnership between the Arts Centre, Melbourne and Multicultural Arts Victoria) commented that ‘it was a morale boost to our group to have the opportunity to perform in such a beautiful space’ (Azmat, Renschler and Fujimoto 2014, 136). A recent study of the New Beginnings Festival in Sydney cited participants as having made similar remarks, such as ‘if you see people dancing there [at the festival], they are really feeling happy, using their own language, they feel safe, they feel like home…’ (Hassanli, Walters and Williamson 2021, 1801). The performers’ feelings and experiences should, the author suggests, be privileged in any discursive analyses of multicultural festivals.

Overall, the 'surprising role of music [and other arts] in place-making' (Shelemay 2017, 208) should not be undervalued. Intra-community education is embedded in a culturally specific performance; the arts are powerful stimuli of transnational nostalgia, promoting remembrances of people, locations and important events experiences in the former homeland. They are also vital pedagogical tools for fostering a connection with cultural heritage among second generation immigrants (Katrak 2008). Festivals also publicly valorize the participants' respective cultural traditions and recognize the freedom which Australia affords the performers in their desire to continue their customs within the new locale (Duffy 2005). In this sense, they embody the principles of a multicultural policy in which ‘group identity politics and cultural recognition’ are central ideas (Keddie 2014, 411). Finally, although the events are indeed a kind of spectacle (Giroux 2016), they are not pop-up carnivals that exoticize the participants. Rather, they provide a formalized performance opportunity for dancers, musicians and artists who are not invited to present themselves on proscenium stages.

Homeland Support

Connections between the sending society and various diasporic nodes may be theorized through the paradigm of transnationalism. The term ‘cosmos’ is proffered by Ramnarine (2007a, 206), and the current study supports a conceptualization of transnational fields that are multi-directional, connecting various diasporic locales with the former homeland. The respective fields between each group in this study and the relevant homeland displays considerable variation.

Some nations offer intensive, structured programs under the auspices of the government. Croatia exemplifies active engagement with diasporic dance and music groups. Hrvatska Matica Iseljenika (2024) or in English, the Croatian Heritage Foundation, organizes seminars every year during the European summer, and these courses enable members of the diaspora to receive specific training. The national ensemble of Croatia, LADO, also assists by sending personnel around the world to run seminars in the diasporic context, as noted by Jane when she said that ‘just in Sydney last year we had a couple of them as well from LADO Zagreb come down to Sydney and teach … and myself my sister and two of our newer up-and-coming teachers went up there.’

Greece also offers homeland-based assistance: ‘there are during summer in Greece; there are seminars all over the place (Gary), while Ukraine sends teachers both from Ukraine itself and from more established diasporic nodes where dance groups have a longer history than those in Australia. Miranda related that:

a [Ukrainian dance] teacher from Canada, [name], came [...] when [they] came it just was mind blowing for me, so I travelled with him and did all the workshops he did. I think it was in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth.

Other nations have funding that either requires certain criteria to be met or they will supply fiscal support for dance-based tours to the homeland but not for pedagogical and choreographic training. Sarah explained that the Bulgarian government’s position is that dance should be connected with other cultural programs, as it had been when she lived in New Zealand:

in New Zealand because I was teaching the Bulgarian Sunday School which I registered in the Bulgarian Ministry of Education. I applied from there for funding for 15 costumes for my children in Auckland. So, the Bulgarian government paid for their costumes because of the Bulgarian school and additional teaching of culture.

Slovakia offered funding to the Melbourne group, but only for the purpose of travel to Slovakia to perform:

we actually went to Slovakia and travelled for 3 weeks and performed at different festivals and things like that [...] But we had some help from the Slovakian government there so that's, I guess, the relationships we've had with the country. (Jacob)

Lastly, technological links between former and current homelands are also salient. During my visits, the researcher observed that several teachers referred to YouTube videos, usually showing the relevant national dance ensemble performing a choreography that the teacher wished to emulate. David related that:

we see over the last 20 years with the development of technology, especially through YouTube, in the earlier days now, now you've got YouTube, you've got Facebook live, you've got all sorts of platforms.

Using digital technology or travelling to the homeland are by far the easiest and cheapest options, because of Australian government regulations. Nina raised the contentious issue of visas and taxation for visiting teachers during her interview, noting the considerable amount of work required by any dance group to bring an overseas teacher to Australia. According to the Australian Taxation Office (2024), visiting tutors require a 417 Working Holiday Visa (which is quite complex to obtain) and must pay tax on their Australian earnings at the unappealing rate of 32.5%. These criteria are prohibitive and thus groups must either work collaboratively, as the Croatian and Ukrainian groups would have done to bring teachers out, or they must forego the opportunity of Australian-based workshops.

Australian support and funding for amateur performing arts groups

Support within Australia can be divided into three sections: activities within the dance group itself, support from the relevant diasporic community, and funding from government and arts bodies. Within dance troupes, fundraising is commonly practised, with the money raised being used for costumes, travel to performances and general administrative expenses. As Jane observed:

we have to fundraise for ourselves, so we've done Reverse raffles, we’ve done dinner dances, events.

Emma agreed, noting that:

we do this all as volunteers. We are fundraising so that we can just pay for things. We don't have very high membership payments. Just the way that the group's developed over the years, it's always been a volunteer focused group.

Another aspect of intra-group support work that allays monetary outlay is the allocation of practical tasks:

We are entirely self-funded, and mum was saying we are not just dancers. I'm going to be running the event organization and [name] is doing all the website management, her husband is taking the photos. [Name] is taking videos. (Tara)

However, intra-community support varies immensely. On one hand, some communities value and support their dance groups; as Jacob reported:

it's probably on our behalf that we haven't really actively sought [external funding], because the dance group is a part of the Slovak community, we fund that internally.

Emma related a similar situation, noting that:

There are other places that we do get grants from within Australia, but they're largely Polish organizations that offer grants so for example, there's a Polish Community Council of Victoria.

Corporate sponsorship from within the diasporic community is another form of support. David told me about the private sponsorship:

[that] we attain through small businesses and the hospitality and retail sector whose children and grandchildren dance with us and are more than happy to write off, you know, a couple of thousand a year on advertising costs for their tax purposes and at the same time, they know that their support is directly benefiting the entire community through our dance school.

Conversely, other diasporic collectives are not seen by the dance teacher as encouraging their work through financial assistance. Ruby reported that:

I don't really receive much support from the [diasporic group] institutions in Australia, not at all regretfully. I always say that my worst audience and my worst collaborators are the [community], actually.

General Government and Arts-Specific Funding

This project highlights the tremendous effort expended by dedicated individuals and communities, with the aim of perpetuating their cultural customs in a post-migration environment. Internal fundraising will most likely continue, but the lack of available funding for amateur community-based groups requires attention. During the era of the larger festivals such as the previously described Festival of All Nations in Melbourne, funding was poured into staging it as a professional, proscenium stage event. One of the issues involved in arts funding is that where there once a more equitable distribution of funds across multiple genres, Western theatrical arts are now privileged.

Two historical examples illustrate the previous, more favourable situation. There used to be a dance troupe called Kolobok in Melbourne, directed by Marina Berezowsky, who came to Australia from Ukraine. Berezowsky was a disciple of the Russian choreographer Igor Moiseyev, and as with his troupe, her dancers were all ballet- trained and performed what may be characterized as highly stylized folk character dances, mostly from Eastern Europe. Kolobok once received considerable financial support from the Victorian government but, as Berezowsky related to dance historian Michelle Potter, in 1982, the Victorian Ministry of Arts declined to fund Kolobok any further (Berezowsky, Marina, 1914-2011 & Potter, Michelle, 1944- & National Film and Sound Archive Australia. 1998, Marina Berezowsky interviewed by Michelle Potter for the Keep dancing oral history project sound recording).

Instead, it redirected the funding to a contemporary dance company and without the government support, Kolobok ceased operations. The second example is Ausdance, the national dance advocacy organization, formerly known as the Australian Association for Dance Education (AADE). AADE’s 2nd biennial conference, held in Sydney in 1980, featured lectures, workshops and discussions on ‘ethnic’ dance genres (Australian Association of Dance Education 2nd Biennial Conference, August 1980. Papers of Ann D’Hau, MS 8275, Box 1. State Library of New South Wales.). However, a search of the Ausdance (2024) website home page reveals that the organization is currently dedicated to supporting professional dancers and teachers, which immediately excludes any person or group categorized as culturally specific.

Currently, it is observed in a general sense that the:

process of ‘creative place-making’ that occurs through creative enterprise and community-based arts and culture, such as festivals or installations of public art, has been found to connect disparate members of a community (Australian Academy for the Humanities 2019, 20).

However, this report makes no mention of multicultural events or of any benefit of cross-cultural engagement. The emphasis of arts funding has been specifically noted by Miranda, who related that, when she asked for feedback about unsuccessful grant applications:

it was ‘But what do you mean you bring the choreography to the dancers, and you don't develop it with the dancers?’ I said ‘well, how do you develop choreography with 40 dancers? What, they're all going to give me their ideas?’ Like, it's not a contemporary piece that I'm working with four dancers. If you have a ballet company, you also don't walk in and say, ‘oh, let's all create.’

Ruby has also ‘tried my luck with, you know the Multicultural Commission, Australian Council of the Arts, which is highly competitive, I don’t even know why I try!’ Later, she expanded upon this statement by adding that:

every artist that works in whatever practice you know, to have ongoing funds to create, they would be where you don't have to struggle so much. I mean, applying for grants, it's a work in itself. And all the work that you're doing. I suppose I could do so much more, you know, if I had the funds.

Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV), a state government organization, was conceptualized from the Festival of All Nations (Kapetopoulos 2010). MAV’s website features a list of grants available to community-based individuals and groups. Some grants are from local councils, such as the Medium-sized grants offered by Wyndham City Council in the Melbourne suburb of Werribee and surrounds (Wyndham City Council 2024). These grants are available to any sort of group operating within the relevant jurisdiction, are highly competitive and very modest in outlay. The Wyndham City Council website provides, as its example of a previously successful grant applicant, a group called Stop Local Hunger Inc. and naturally, food security would be given higher priority than any form of recreational activity.

Several teachers stated that their groups have applied for and received funding from government sources, particularly at local level. Typical comments included:

This FolkGrooves event is something which was under the Victorian government Youth Fest program which-you may have heard of this program- they basically asked groups for ideas to involve some sort of youth participation and the one that happened during the month of September… But yeah, we got a small grant. It wasn't much; it was only $2000 from the Victorian government. So, the short story is we have applied for grants here and there and we've been successful with some and also unsuccessful with others (Gary).

I've received a lot of support from Merribek, which is Moreland. So, they supported a few projects and initiatives-even some parties-a couple of years ago we celebrated our 10-year anniversary, and we applied for funds to put a party, and that was funded by the Council, which was great. (Ruby)

We do get the occasional grant from, like, local council, so like the Knox City Council, whether it's running fundraising events which then can sponsor us and getting something around there. I think the most recent grant were the mirrors that we received; I think that was the one grant that we kind of applied from within Knox City Council and it was a sports-based grant. (Emma)

Another local council listed on MAV’s website is the City of Stonnington (2024), which offers Arts and Culture Grants. However, the list of assessment criteria presents numerous obstacles for small amateur groups such as those represented in this project. The apparent preference for ongoing innovation and new choreographic work is problematic and, as several interviewees noted, is an obstacle they frequently encounter in grant applications. Miranda concluded that:

there's room for a lot of exploration and different things and I think that's what affects me here in Australia about funding because you know every dance culture, every dance culture came from somewhere. Contemporary came from somewhere; ballet came from somewhere [...] unless you're contemporary, ballet you don't get a guernsey! Even like tap wouldn't get funded. Art is art. And [our] dance, yes, it's historical, but it's still art and we don't do what was done in the village; we create art from it. The fact that we're not supported, yeah, it gets-it upsets me.

Thus, while the dance groups are in need of considerable financial assistance, they are often overlooked by local authorities and hence, tend to fall back on self-funded ventures or seeking sponsorship from dancers’ parents and friends who operate businesses and can offer corporate support.

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Conclusion

This project highlights the solidarities and precarities of teaching culturally specific dance in a diasporic context in Melbourne, Australia. The principal commonality among the teachers is their passion for their art, and a drive to perpetuate traditional customs among members of future generations. Within each diasporic community, the relevant dance group provides a choreo-musical representation of the former homeland, generating both personal nostalgia and intra-community cohesion. In public performances, the groups proudly display their dance styles across cultural boundaries.

The primary issue raised in the interviews is the financial difficulty of continuing to teach dance in Melbourne. Even within the immigrant communities, there is an expectation that dancers will perform without being paid, although there was considerable variation in the level of support provided. The dance groups also provide a service to the broader community through their ongoing and repeated participation in multicultural festivals, often without monetary remuneration. Yet, the expectation that this situation will continue is unfair and some form of support would ameliorate the current circumstances. It is understood that the public purse is not limitless, but there are other ways, apart from direct fiscal grants, in which assistance to these groups could be provided. For example, reduced rates of hall hire could be offered by local councils and private enterprises; the savings could then be directed into other expenses such as the compulsory public liability insurance required to hire a practice hall. Gary has noticed the disparity of hall hire costs in his area in light of the minimal class fees paid by his dancers:

The senior citizens get that hall for something like $5.50 an hour-for the senior citizens to use the hall. Whereas for us to use the hall, we're paying $25 an hour, which is still not a huge amount of money but for a club that has no form of income or a club whose only form of income is scraping through with a tiny profit at small events like what we're organizing in in a few weeks' time, and other than that, it's just a $50 registration fee. That's what we charge for the kids.

Thus, it seems that the dance groups will face financial difficulties well into the future. The study was conducted in one city, Melbourne. It is likely that the results from dance groups in other Australian cities would be similar for the same diasporic communities. However, a major limitation of this project is that it is possible that for other communities, the situation may vary considerably. As noted earlier, the intention was not to be Eurocentric, although this participant demographic has shown that even for communities with longer settlement timeframes in Australia, financial difficulties are common. Future research would, hopefully, capture the situation for more recent arrivals, such as those from Southeast Asia or Africa.

Finally, it would be pertinent to remember that the research participants are dedicated to perpetuating their cultural traditions to subsequent generations within their respective diasporic communities in Australia, and thus they deserve the last words in this analysis:

I'd like to add that it's an honour for me to be to be teaching these young-well, mainly young- individuals (Gary).

Our whole community works and thrives off volunteer work and we're all there because we want to upkeep that tradition and things like that. I do it for the fun of it. (Jacob).

I guess it was my way to keep in touch with the form of an expression of my culture that I felt was not represented here in Australia (Ruby).

We want to show that Australian Macedonian culture to people and I don't want people to just overlook us. I just hope that people could see well, I mean this is what I want to do (Molly).

Such comments display the fortitude and determination displayed by the participants, who wish to continue ‘Teaching Dance in Diaspora’ for as long as possible. Hopefully, through projects such as the one on which this article is based, their task will be better supported and thus, made easier.

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