FEELING, MOTION AND ATTENTION IN THE DISPLAY OF EMOTIONS IN YOLNGU LAW, SONG AND DANCE PERFORMANCE.

In what follows I will consider how song narratives and dance movements brings to the fore affect in encountering others, both human and non human, and I argue that the Law (rom) must be felt in order to be respected and applied. In dance performance, the centrality of affect is also encapsulated in the complex Yolngu notion of “ma:rr”, a feeling that encompasses knowledge and experience, intellect and perception, the everyday and the numinous, the self and the other. If, as Yolngu say, there is no Law without participation in ritual performance it is necessary to explore the nature of this participation. From this perspective I propose that, while the song texts suggestively evoke perceptions and emotions in the process of knowing everything in the environment, it is the dance that generates a surplus of meaning by which the expressed overflows the represented.