The Event

When: June 19th – 21st 2009

Where: 15km South of Laura, at the Ang-Gnarra Festival Grounds, Cape York. Laura is 330 km north of Cairns.

Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival is the premier celebration of Aboriginal culture in Cape York. The Festival is a biennial event celebrating & show-casing the culture of the Aboriginal people of Cape York Peninsula through song, dance ceremony and performance.

The performance and practice of Aboriginal dance & culture at the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival is a very important element in the preservation & continuance of the unique culture of the region.

The Dance Festival Ground at Laura is the site of a very old traditional Bora ground and is a respected and sacred site to Aboriginal people. It is nestled amongst some of the oldest and most spectator rock art in the world.  Recently the rock art of the area was awarded Queensland Icon status by the National Trust in recognition of its significance to the environmental and cultural landscape.

Known as a “meeting” ground for the communities of Cape York, the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival is highly regarded by many Aboriginal people as a place where families meet new and old family members, make new acquaintances and exchange and pass on family histories.

In addition, many descendants of Aboriginal people whose people were removed from the area return every festival to learn of their culture and of their ancestry. Consequently the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival is seen as a very important event in cultural retention.

The Festival enables the wider community to witness and gain insight into the uniqueness of Aboriginal culture. Festival spectators witness the story telling of Aboriginal culture through dance, language and art.

History of the Festival

The Cape York Dance Festival as it was known in the early 1980s was a festival of dance and culture to be rotated every two years within the communities of Cape York. The first two Dance Festivals were held at Cooktown and Hopevale. For the last 25 years, the Dance Festival has been staged at Laura, and has come to be known nationally and internationally as the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival.

The 2007 Festival was highly significant, as the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival marked its 30th anniversary in Cape York.  The Festival is widely believed to be the longest continual running Aboriginal cultural festival in Australia.

The Festival has an international audience as witnessed by the large number of European websites pertaining to Aboriginal cultural content and the number of tourists who attended in 2007 from overseas. 

Who organises the Festival?

From 2005-2009 the Quinkan & Regional Cultural Centre, the traditional owners and hosts of Laura have asked Flash Black to manage the Laura Festival.

Flash Black is a new and exciting company specialising in event management, promotions and advertising needed for the Indigenous community in Australia as well as providing similar services to agencies and businesses locally and globally. Flash Black is dedicated to helping build a strong infrastructure within the Aboriginal and Islander communities, as well as a strong and healthy connection to the rest of Queensland and Australia.