Deaf Indigenous Dance Group collection
Collection
During 2021, North Queensland based photo-journalist Sean Davey worked with the group to document the DIDG performers and their work. This involved photographing DIDG practices, performances and events, creating annotated portraits reflecting DIDG member's backgrounds and feelings towards DIDG and recording oral histories of the lives of DIDG members. This project was done in collaboration with photographer Aishah Kenton of the Pacific Centre for Photographic Arts.
The Deaf and Indigenous Dance Group (DIDG) is a Cairns based community organisation that celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are deaf or hard of hearing who have a love of Indigenous culture and dancing. The group was established 1997-1998 by Patricia Morris-Banjo and Priscilla Seden (deceased). Their mission is to showcase and promote their abilities and talents. The group is as much a social club as a dance group providing members a safe space to dance, express their culture and hang out with other people with whom they can communicate freely. "First Nations people have a strong cultural connection to language meaning those with hearing loss often experience high rates of loneliness – especially when they don’t have other people around them who can understand and support them...its important that Indigenous people with hearing impairment have the space in which to express themselves as well as their connection to culture" (Sue Frank, DIDG dancer and manager). The group usually practices on a wooden stage so that they can feel the drums and the tapping of the sticks. "We respond to vibrations, and we respond to the ground, and we can link to the music through our eyes...Some of us have some residual hearing so we can follow the clap sticks...but others just feel it, it's just a rhythm." (Patricia Morris-Banjo) (Information taken from: The Guardian and ABC News websites, viewed 10 November 2022).
In copyright.