Mandurah Aboriginal group dances to keep Noongar culture alive

For Mr Kelly, traditional Aboriginal dancing isn’t only about celebrating his own culture, it’s also about keeping his heritage alive, telling stories and breaking down stereotypes.

It’s a statement.

Mr Kelly decided to start dancing after he realised young Aboriginal people in the region were losing touch with Noongar culture.

“There’s not much strong tradition down here as it is up north still,” he said.

“No one really sort of wanted to act on it and keep it alive.

“I came up to pop, I talked to him and I said ‘all us boys we are sort of losing our culture down here’.

“I wanted to make that strong, get all the boys together in one group.”

Late last year, together with his grandfather, local elder Frank Nannup, Mr Kelly created Mandurah’s own Aboriginal dance group, Mandjar Maamun Nyumbi Theatre.

The group hopes to empower local Aboriginal people, reconnect them with their culture, keep their traditions alive, and pass on their knowledge to younger generations.

“This is our group keeping it alive and teaching the younger ones and make sure that stays,” Mr Kelly said.

Since February, the group has performed in Busselton and Mandurah and has become the first local group to have a 12-year-old didgeridoo player.

Mr Nannup, who performed around the world in a dance group, said the group was all about empowering the dancers through culture.

“It’s about empowering the young blokes on who they are, where they come from, what their land is, what their culture is,” he said.

“To me Mandurah is the centre of the Noongar tribe, it’s where they used to come and trade and where they used to come and camp.

“Simply because of that matter we needed a performing group.”

For the dancers, it’s a source of pride and knowledge.

“Before we started this group I would literally say 80 per cent of us boys in the group wouldn’t get out there and do a performance,” Mr Kelly said.

“The boys after they’ve finished the dance they want to go back for more, and as we go we are also learning ourselves,” group dancer Jerome Williams said.

The group’s inspiration for the dances comes from nature itself.

During their trips to the bush, the dancers observe the region’s native wildlife in order to incorporate their movements to the dance to tell stories about the traditional Aboriginal way of life.

“Say you’re driving down a road and you see kangaroos hopping through the paddock,” Mr Kelly said.

“Seeing that image, you can put that little bit of two seconds into a full dance.

“So you can put the kangaroo doing its movement, having some food, scratching off, you can mix it and match it.”

Mr Kelly said it’s about constantly learning, and passing on that knowledge to younger dancers and the audience.

“You sort of have that stereotypical sort of vision [of Aboriginal people], and then you meet us and it opens up this door to a lot of things,” he said.

“That’s what we want to bring out to people, not only have that book face, we want people having this whole image where they know how [Aboriginal] people know how to tell stories in the way they dance, how they make fire, how they do their shelters.”

The group hopes to be able to represent Noongar culture overseas in the near future, spreading the knowledge about the traditional indigenous way of life and contemporary Aboriginal issues through dance and theatre.