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From St Pauls to Paris for dance team

7 August 2006 - Members from the Arpaka Dance Company at St Pauls Village started  an exciting journey to introduce their culture in another country.

Artistic Director/Founder of the Arpaka Dance Company Dennis Newie took his two nephews, Pedro Solomon and Eccles Newie, to perform at the Australian Indigenous Arts Museum and Australian Embassy in Paris. Dennis has been around the world dancing on many occasions but this was the first time out of Australia for Pedro and Eccles.

Arpaka Dance Company was funded by the Australian Arts Council to travel from St Pauls to Sydney for rehearsals then off to Paris to perform at the opening of the Musee de Quay Branly.

This was the first public opening of this Indigenous Arts Museum. They were accompanied by an Aboriginal Dance Group from Northern Territory and two other local girls, Rita Pryce and Peggy Misi.

Arpaka performed at the Australian Embassy in the afternoon after the museum performance in the morning. After their show they were taken to an area backstage to meet Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer who was over there giving a speech at the Embassy and commenting on Australian Art.

Pedro and Eccles have performed traditional Torres Strait Island dancing with their Uncle since the age of five, but both have never been outside the Eastern part of Australia.

So there were mixed emotions of excitement and nervousness when they were chosen to perform in another country with their Uncle Dennis. Apart from the long plane trip and the nervousness of international travel, Pedro and Eccles found the trip to be an eye-opening and could not wait to dance. They both didn’t know what to expect and found it hard to believe they were on the other side of the world because everything they saw in real life, they had only seen in the movies or on TV.

The Eiffel Tower was larger than they expected and the boys made a comment: “Never in a million years did we expect to see the Eiffel Tower!” The cameras never stopped rolling once they toucheddown at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

The highlights of the trip was seeing the Eiffel Tower and just performing in another country.
“Walking in the city of Paris, seeing restaurants on the footpath and hearing the French language all around felt strange” says Eccles. “Everything was so expensive; I found the language difficult but I was so excited because lots of people were interested in our dances and asked about the Torres Strait Culture after the performances,” says Pedro.

Apart from all the highlights, the tiring performances and rehearsals, the language difficulty and the travel, Pedro and Eccles bought lots of souvenirs back to Australia for their families and they are keen to make another trip overseas in the near future.

Source: Torres News

relative links:

• Musee du Quai Branly website link
• Little King Johnny removed
• Art too political for politicians
• Dreamtime in the druids' domain
• Australian art demonstrates strength of aboriginal culture
• Paris to showcase Indigenous art
• Aboriginal artists finally break through on film
• No longer your usual suspect
• Yellow Fella on a Journey to Cannes
  An Australian documentary about Tom E Lewis’ search for identity will become the first Indigenous (documentary) film to be shown at Cannes Film Festival.
• Film festival shine spotlight on Indignous film
• Aboriginal art shows a creator snake
• Aboriginal originals woo French
• Links: Arts + Culture
• The Aboriginal Arts 'fake' controversy: Traditional art holds the key to world understanding of Aboriginal culture

Further information: art issues page - includes news index and external links