‘Recipe’ for Island Dancing

From The Opera House 'Kitchen'

Beth Dean must be acknowledged as the

doyen of the European choreographers

who have concerned themselves with the dance forms of the Pacific Islands. Her in terests have ranged widely and she has developed a profound knowledge of the in finite variety of movements and themes, which characterise the dances of the Pacific. She has also played a most signifi cant role in assuring that recognition is be ing given to the dynamism, now being dis played by the national dance groups which have established themselves in a number of the Island nations. Audiences outside the Islands are now growing to appreciate the vigour, the grace and the spontaneity of Island dances and to realise that the hula is really only one dance form, which has suf fered from over-commercialisation.

Now Beth Dean has gone a step further and, under the auspices of the Sydney Opera House Trust, has produced a book.

Three Dances of Oceania, which is a scholarly treatise, concerned with dance forms from the Cook Islands, Fiji and Ocean Island.

It is a book, which basically meets the needs of a choreographer or a teacher of dancing, as it is a technical book of in structions, setting out the movements of the several dances. The technical value of these explanations would be best assessed by those who are going to put them into practice. However, Beth Dean, does provide a succinct introductory statement, which sets out a framework giving the anthropological background to the dances of the Pacific, and the notes which accom pany the dance instruction are full and in formative.

Just how the anthropologists will receive her analysis of the cultural significance of dance in the Pacific has to be seen; it is always on the cards, that by trying to make a short, omnibus statement the author sets up a target at which the experts are able to loose their darts.

As a book, Three Dances of Oceania is an oddity. There is a mystery element built into it. It is quite intriguing to realise that it is necessary to search with care to find out the identity of the publishers, and it does not bear the now universally-accepted form of copyright notation. The photography is of a reasonably high stan dard, the crudity of the maps mar the general presentation. And, to return to a theme I have taken up before .. . why can’t authors of books about the Pacific be consistent in their use of orthography. It seems pointless to have a section which states the usage in Fijian of the letters B,

C, D, G, Q, and to use the forms Buu, Dama, yaco, noda, and so on in the text, then to have a map which reverts to the spellings of Mbua, Ndama, Rambi . . .

To sum up this is a book which deserved to be published. It has a great deal of merit in the way in which it presents a vital aspect of the Pacific way of life, but it seems to have about it an air of a rather hasty preparation. But, there must be a thought for the Pacific bibliophile. I un derstand that only 1000 copies were printed of Three Dances of Oceania, and I have more than a mere suspicion that it is the kind of book which will become a collector's item in the not-too-dislanl future.

W. G. Coppell

(THREE DANCES OF OCEANIA. By Beth Dean. Publish ed by the Sydney Opera House Trust, 1976. Sydney. 52.50.)