This will be a very special opportunity for the Dances of Universal Peace community and their friends to learn about Aboriginal culture, stories, dances and connect with Country Comments from Participants

Indeed it was a wonderful Spring Renewal Retreat

What I liked was: the list of what food to bring… and the way we happily shared and took care of the meal-making, setting-up, wasting-

up and cleaning-up together…

What I liked was meeting Noel and Trish again. What I liked was Noel telling us about how his people looked after the land and sea, by not

chopping down the best and strongest trees, keeping them for their seeds and natural propagation; how they fished the smaller fish,

leaving the best and biggest ones to spawn and replenish the sea. The other stories were too sad… too sad to listen to for too long…

Deepening connection with one another at story time under the stars

around a camp fire was great and cosy… although somewhat difficult for me at times when I slowly drifted into sleepiness…

And what I really came for was our dancing together… with leaders from other DOUP groups… which you Arjuna Ben so skilfully grouped,

encouraged, and co-ordinated into several beautiful sessions. Thanks to everyone for a beautiful weekend. I have songs singing themselves within. Soothing and inspiring. Setting me apart from my mind. Calling me back to body, heart and field.... Thanks Ben and Karen, you organised a great renewal. I always look forward to seeing you again. It was great to dance and sing together in such a wonderful spot. And I especially loved the morning zikr! And a specially big thanks to Ben and Karen for organising and holding the space for us all this weekend. Held in safety, freedom and flow! You two are magic! Thanks, Arjuna, it was a wonderful w/e,

Here are some photos from the special weekend! Thank you so much to you and Karen for organising such an amazing weekend of dance and Aboriginal culture. Today I have been reflecting on the weekend, the talks with Noel, followed by the walk and viewing of the artwork in the cave. It was a great honour for me to sit and listen to Noel, a respected Elder, share so much about his family and culture. Dancing on the earth was very powerful and deepening, with so many beautiful dances being led by all the dance leaders. Thirteen of us shared the beauty of these dances, shared delicious food and created a community! Thank you! Some photos from Maria-Eleni

Such a lovely time & place spent together. Here’s a link to the photos I took over the weekend: https://greenoak120.smugmug.com/Spirituality/Dances-of/Spring-Renewal-Dance-Camp-2015/n-t6pnP8 Yes I had a marvelous time - it was perfect thank you so much Ben and Karen for your love light and energy - and to all the other beautiful participants The weekend was a great success on many levels. There were 13 of us a good goddess number and we deepened our relationships to each other, to the land, to the indigenous people of many lands and to our wonderful hosts Noel and Trish. There's been a couple of requests to repeat this again next year!

On the Saturday we had teachings from Noel and later Phil his nephew, who also led the Aboriginal dance with us that we did last year. It was a chance to deepen our understanding of the dance. Noel spoke about his challenges in living in a society that did not acknowledge its indigenous people. It was very challenging for all of us to hear his pain. As well he spoke about many cultural themes such as the way that his people would never harvest an ancient tree or a fully mature Abalone or other fish, as these were the breeding stock and the ones that had the most resilient genes. There were teachings on the use of plants like the Cabbage Palms.

In the afternoon we went for a drive and long bush walk down into a deep gully to one of the local Aboriginal art galleries. There were charcoal drawings there over 5000 years old. There were sharpening grooves for tools and weapons in the rocks. It was a very powerful place energetically. It felt like a real privilege to have had the opportunity to see such a sacred site.

Drawings of a man and a dingo

Phil and his son showing us the giant goanna and the men.

There were stories of a giant hairy man like big foot

Lots of wildflowers were greeting us as we made our way through the bush

Beautiful moss and lichen covered rocks - it made the place feel very ancient

The dance retreat went deep for me on many levels. Firstly it was a deepening of my relationship with Noel and Trish. It was my third time to both meeting with them and to visiting their land. It was also the third time I'd organised a cultural experience of contact for dancers of universal peace with Aboriginal culture. The first had been in 1996, a day's workshop called Dancing the Land with Sean Choolburra and Taryn Drummond, who had been part of the Aboriginal studies component of my Circuit Breaker programme. This was an intensive English youth programme for the Adult Migrant English Service (AMES). Sean at the time was the Aboriginal artist in residence in the NSW Art Gallery, and together with Taryn they formed an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance group called Naroo, that would perform at our end of semester events for the AMES youth programs. They also performed at the Bondi Pavilion and for schools.

As I’d been working with these two delightful young indigenous performers I thought it’d

be a great opportunity to arrange for the dance community to engage in a cultural exchange with them. This is a way of working that comes from theatre anthropology that

I’ve been involved in. We learned some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island dances from

them, which included the song Lancha that we were gifted from Emelda who was Sean’s

mentor from up Townsville way. It was also on this occasion that the Yirrigi peace greeting Yundu Wanjiboy, could be added to the greetings in many different languages for that dance. On the day Sitara shared some Native American inspired dances that she had been taught by indigenous people in the US. Given the number of indigenous

dances from other countries in the dance repertoire, it was great to make this connection with the indigenous people of this land as part of a peace making process through the dances. Then last year we were able to have our first Spring Renewal at Jamanee Gunyah with Noel and Trish, which was beautifully documented by Jenny Templin in her photo essay now on our website: http://dancesofuniversalpeaceaustralia.org/spring-renewal-retreat-2014/ One of the interesting things that came out of our journey to Lake Meroo with Noel was that this was the same place that Wirrima Anne Thomas used to take the women for the

women’s and children’s dreaming camps, that Maria-Eleni, Habiba, Jenny Chivel and

Raimunda used to attend years ago. Also Hannah used to attend those camps with her children. It was at those camps that Maria-Eleni would lead dances like the The Beauty Way and Dreamtime. So this was another connection between our dance community and Aboriginal people. This was further evident this year when it turned out that Diane

used to run Dreaming camps with Guboo Ted Thomas, Anne’s partner, including ones

on her community’s land in the Thora valley called Dreamtime. It was very appropriate

that Diane led the dance Dreamtime on the Sunday. It was through Hannah and Inana that I made my connection with Shafia, from NZ, who became my dance co-mentor, and who developed all those beautiful Maori inspired dances that we danced at the retreat. The Saturday night was a story time around the fire, where people were invited to share stories about their connection to indigenous people and culture or the land itself. As I mentioned we are all indigenous people from somewhere, so where were our ancestors indigenous? On the other hand we are all indigenous people of planet Earth, as I have heard said.

The stories were very engaging and varied. Overall they showed that many of us had not had all that much connection with Aboriginal people in Australia, although there were connections with indigenous people from other countries like Africa and the Middle East. Also the connection to Celtic culture seems prevalent for people of British descent. Of course we have some beautiful Celtic inspired dances in our tradition as well as Maori, Hawaian, South African, Mayan and Native American.

On the Sunday and Monday our time was spent singing and dancing as the dances listed below show. On the Sunday night we had another storytelling session. This time the focus was on our connection to the dances and our spiritual practice. For me this was a deeply satisfying session. Just hearing how the dances played such an important role in people’s lives, and how many of us were estranged from the religious traditions of our families and how the dances had become our spiritual practice. The Dances on Sunday Morning 9.30 – 12.30 pm – themes: Creation, Indigenous & Earth Dances

1. Introductory Bismillah - Arjuna 2. Te Kore – Karen 3. Abwoon D’Bashmaya – Sabira 4. Bereshith (Oz version) –Arjuna

Story time with Robyn – the story of the Rainbow serpent 5. Dreamtime – Diane 6. E Malama – Gini Leilani 7. Mother Earth is a Great Great Ship – Cedar

The Dances of Sunday Afternoon 3.30 – 5.40 pm – theme: Indigenous Dances

1. Ko Papatuanuku – Arjuna 2. Neesa Neesa – Karen 3. Shaddai – Gini Leilani

Eric Bogle Song – Bring Their Spirits Home – Dot 4. Pachamama – 4 Elements – Sabira 5. Ganesha – Robyn 6. En La Kech – Arjuna

The Dances on Monday Morning 9.30 – 1.30 pm – themes: Sufi, Peace, Indigenous Dances

1. Shamanic Al Hamdullilah – Arjuna 2. Tane Mahuta – Karen 3. Shanoon – Gini - Leilani 4. Ganga Ki Jai Jai – Robyn 5. Minmia’s song and dance - Michal 6. Ama Usum – Sabira 7. Let My Heart Reflect thy Light Lord – Diane 8. Out Beyond Ideas of Right and Wrong – Robyn 9. Shalom Salaam – Gini Leilani 10. Miserlou – Maria-Eleni

As well as the dances there was also a request for a Zikr time in the morning, so a few of us would sing our Zikr songs to the frogs by the lake each morning. This was a beautiful way to start the day. As well we mainly organized our own food, thanks to Karen who had organised for people to bring specific foods and a cooked meal for 6 people as well as bread, fruit for morning fruit salad and salad veggies for lunch and dinner. Each morning Karen made the porridge, except for the last day when Sabira offered to make it. Also Karen organized choppers for each meal time, so this became a karma yoga session for people, other people were on clean up duties, while I made the fires in the evening and looked after the generator. We also had a Wattle-seed and Lemon Myrtle veggie curry that Trish made for our Saturday lunch, which was delicious. On the Monday, after our final lunch there was another opportunity to connect to Noel and Trish, as they’d been in Sydney the day before. This gave us the chance to talk some more and share the Eric Bogle song that Dot had sung to us the day before, about the Aboriginal soldiers who were killed at Gallipoli. Noel had spoken about that the morning before Dot came. He told us of his 3 uncles that were buried there, and yet this year was the first year he’d been invited to march in the Anzac Day March in Ulladulla. This was a very moving moment for all of us, who were there to sing for Noel, who was unfamiliar with the song. Dot gave him a copy and he was very touched by this. It felt like we were able once again to make peace through music, which

is what our dance community is all about! Photos of the last day catching up with Noel after our Monday lunch