This thesis examines two examples of martial dance theatre: Mika HAKA performed by Torotoro (New Zealand), and The Sound of Silence performed by Samudra (India). Both productions were created for international touring, and this thesis looks at their performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK). The companies’ choreography integrates native and foreign dance with their hereditary martial arts. These disciplines involve practitioners in displays of prowess that are also entertaining spectacles. They have an expressive dimension that makes them contiguous with dance – a potential that Torotoro and Samudra exploit. The companies address their audiences with combative and inviting movements: Torotoro juxtapose wero and haka (Māori martial rites) with breakdance; Samudra combine kaḷarippayaṭṭu (Kerala’s martial art) with bharatanāṭyam (South Indian classical dance). Their productions interweave local movement practices with performance arts in global circulation, and are often presented before predominantly white, Western audiences. What is created are performances that are generically unstable – the product of cultural interactions in which contradictory agendas converge. In its largest scope, martial dance theatre might include military parades and tattoos, ritual enactments of combat, and folk and classical dance theatre. These performances propagate images of idealised men that create statements of national and cultural identity. They, and the martial disciplines they theatricalise, are also implicated in the performative construction of gender, ethnicity and race. Torotoro and Samudra’s performances, influenced by queer and feminist agendas, offer insights into martial dance theatre’s masculinist potential, and its contribution to the intercultural negotiation of identities. Prominent European theatre practitioners have sought to employ the martial arts to develop Western performers. If these culturally specific disciplines are expressive and performative disciplines, then what are the implications and complications of this transcultural project?

The rise of the 21st Century Islamic extremist movement, which was mobilised by the al-Qaeda attacks of and responses to September 11, 2001, heralds a new period in the history of terrorism. The increased frequency and intensity of this type of terrorism affects every nation in the world, not least Australia. Rising to meet the challenges posed by terrorism is the field of terrorism studies, the field which aims at understanding, explaining, and countering terrorism. Despite the importance of the field, it has been beleaguered with criticisms since its inception as a response to the rise of international terrorism. These criticisms specifically aim at the field's lack of objectivity, abstraction, levels of research, and levels of analysis. These criticisms were the impetus behind the adoption of the methodology of this thesis, which offers the distinct ability to understand, explain, and forecast the way in which terrorists interact within covert cells. Through social network analysis, this thesis examines four terrorist cells that have operated in or against Australia. These cells are from the groups Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo (Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood), Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth), Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), and Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Community) and operated between 1963 and 2003. Essentially, this methodology attempts to discover, map, and analyse the interaction within the cells during the covert stage of their respective operations. Following this, the results are analysed through the traditional social network analysis frameworks to discover the internal dynamics of the cell and identify the critical nodes (leaders) within the cells. Destabilisation techniques are subsequently employed, targeting these critical nodes to establish the most effective disruption techniques from a counter-terrorism point of view. The major findings of this thesis are: (1) that cells with a focus on efficiency rather than covertness were more successful in completing their objectives (contrary to popular belief); and (2) betweenness centrality (control over the flow of communication) is a critical factor in identifying leaders within terrorist cells. The analysis also offered significant insight into how a Jemaah Islamiyah cell might operate effectively in Australia, as well as the importance of local contacts to terrorist operations and the significance of international counter-terrorism cooperation and coordination.