My Big Tahitian Dance Show: A Video

I did it! On Saturday night May 15th I made a sort of right of passage: I was in a Tahitian dance performance at To'ata Amphitheater, Tahiti's biggest venue and the premier stage for Tahitian dance. Most Tahitian girls dream of performing at To'ata and many of them do it. Dance is an enormously important part of society and is one of the joys of being a Polynesian woman - not that the men mind it either. It was an incredible experience of female bonding, dancing, sweating, sewing, stressing, practicing in the cold rain and laughing with an incredibly diverse range of girls, women and old ladies.

The dance schools aren't as lithe and flashy as the pros but still have some amazing costumes, choreography and an ambiance that's literally on fire. Part of my troupe will go on to compete in the singing and dancing competitions at the world famous Heiva I Tahiti festival (again at To'ata) in July but I'll be out of the country so will miss it unfortunately.

As I said in my last post about my rehearsals, the big story is getting published elsewhere so I don't want to blow it here, but here is a video sampler of the show. My daughter filmed this from the stands and I'm in three of the dances in this clip. I'm not going to give you any more hints except to say that I'm the fourth dark figure that walks on stage from the seating area in the first dance. You can also hear my daughter say "Oh mon Dieu! Eh Maman," at one point during the first dance. Hopefully it was because I was busting a great move . . . but probably not.

The Diner Dansant - How Tahiti Iti Rocks Out on a Saturday Night

To say that the nightlife is dead here in Tahiti Iti is a gross understatement. Fortunately every couple months or so someone throws a Diner Dansant (a diner and dance night)and everyone within a 25 km radius throw on their flashiest duds and come out to get their groove on. Last night my Tahitian dance school put on their annual Diner Dansant at the beautiful, waterfront Restaurant de Musée Gauguin and over 500 people turned up - it rocked.
A Tahitian Diner Dansant is unlike any other party I've ever been to anywhere. Everyone from age seven to 75 come out for the fun and all laugh and dance with each other till the wee hours of the morn. It's a small-town feel and everyone knows each other or at least looks familiar. I ended up dancing with a bunch of my kid's school teachers.
Alcohol flows freely but there's an air of class to these events so they rarely get messy. Last night started with a delicious Chinese-style sit down meal, which was followed by a dance performance by the best, youngest and most beautiful of the school's dancers. I've written before about my passion for Tahitian dance but now that I'm taking dance classes my enthusiasm for the art is sky-rocketing. Imagine eating Chinese braised duck and poisson cru while watching tanned buff men in palm frond loin cloths waggling their knees with the most gorgeous long-haired Tahitian girls shaking their hips a million miles an hour. It's graceful, it's by far the sexiest thing you'll ever see and yet somehow it remains surprisingly wholesome.
In fact the whole night was wholesome despite the drunken revelry. In Tahiti, couples waltz dancing reigns even with the youngest crowds and it's nearly always danced to a live group playing cheesy synthesized fox-trot renditions of everything from Tahitian classics to (I kid you not) the "Hokey Pokey" and "When the Saints Come Marching In." I've always considered myself a pretty decent dancer but here in Polynesia I am at the bottom of the barrel. There's some second rhythm that Tahitians hear that I can't catch and the whole swiveling and swirling of bodies along with the quick waltz step makes it all confusingly end up somewhere between a super steamy salsa dance and ballroom dancing. Every now and then I get a cavalier (dance partner) who brings out the best in me but usually they give up on me after one dance. Luckily my husband is closer to my level so we just sway back and forth in awe of everyone else. Everyone on the dance floor is smiling, laughing, sweating in the heat and no one cares how bad we dance - they are just happy we're out on the floor enjoying the evening with them.

Note: We forgot the camera last night so for the first time I'm using a stock photo! It's from the US Tahiti Tourism website.

Post-Heiva: Better Than the Real Thing?

While the Heiva is an over the top, Polynesian entertainment spectacular put on at Tahiti's biggest venue, seeing the dancers perform their acts after the festival and away from the crowds can be even better. Last weekend my family and I took a four-day trip to Moorea and I got to see a post-Heiva show by Tamariki Oparo, a dance troupe from Rapa who won the second place prize at the Heiva dance competitions. Their show had been the talk of Tahiti because of its low-frills authenticity. Most winning acts are put on by professional troupes who practice year-round and have bigger budgets but Tamariki Oparo are a small group of mostly teenage dancers that come from French Polynesia's most remote island, Rapa in the Gambier Archipelago, that has a population of under 500. This means that he 50 or so dancers represent about 10% of the entire population! I had been sorry I'd missed their dance during the festival.

This surprise local Moorea show was at the Club Bali Hai, an old school American-run boutique hotel right on Cooks Bay that I've always loved for its unpretentious sailor's vibe. No advance tickets were for sale, we just had to show up and pay 1000 CFP (about US$12) at the door (my Heiva tickets for mediocre seats cost 2500 CFP). Our kids got in free. There's no stage at Club Bali Hai, just a big lawn next to their little outdoor cafe called L'Ananas Bleu (the Blue Pineapple) squashed between the breezes of Cooks Bay and Moorea's vertical peaks. Apparently Tamariki Oparo had spent the previous week or so performing as a handful of other hotels around the country and this was one of their final shows before going home to Rapa.




About 150 people were in the audience, many of us just sitting cross-legged on the lawn. We were right in front on the ground, best seats in the house. The leader of the troupe came out first and gave an unusually long opening speech in Tahitian and French and asked the audience to please translate it into English to anyone who needed it. My favorite part of his discourse was when he described how there were really no stores in Rapa but plenty of fish and very fertile soil. "We'll all do great if there's ever independence from France," he said. "But I'm not so sure about all of you." He then told us the story of the up-coming dance: the evangelization of Rapa. This was no surprise since I'd already seen the group's singing act (see my previous blog) and their theme had been much more religious than most. The people of Rapa are obviously quite pious.

The dance began with the whole troupe, dressed in ti' leaves and smeared with mud dancing Rapa style. Now Rapa style is a little different than Tahitian style dancing. Instead of just moving the lower body they wiggle and writhe their upper bodies too making it a little less refined looking but much more fun and energetic. You just sort of want to get up and dance, mud-covered with them. Josh was taking photos and some of the guys were really hamming it up for him.

Next, two of the Rapa dancers sat in a wooden outrigger that they were able to drag along the grass to make it look like they were moving in the ocean. The narrator explained they were out fishing. Next a group of Europeans (actually Rapa dancers dressed in white pants, white and blue striped pants and sailors hats) came up in another boat, kidnapped the Rapa fisherman and took them to Tahiti. In the next act the dancers wore Tahitian style dance costumes (long fiber skirts and bandeau bras) and danced a Tahitian style dance - it was great to see the contrast with the Rapa style. The fishermen get evangelized after some beautiful dancing scenes then go back to Rapa and the mud and leaf dancers again, to spread the word of God.



I loved the show but couldn't help but be a little sickened by the irony of the theme. The evangelists banned Polynesian dancing just as soon as they had the power to do so, so the fact that this was a dance telling the evangelization story, via dance . . . well you get the picture. While not historically correct, I do appreciate that the Rapa people are deeply religious and I am happy that nowadays they get to both express their love of God and their prowess in dance.

In all this was nothing like watching the Heiva where you look down on a stage from a large amphitheater and hear everything filtered through speakers. No, this was the real deal with the dancers looking us right in the eye and being able to see them sweat. At one point the star male dancer even lost his skirt and continued on with the rest of the show in his bright blue skivvies. You wouldn't see that at the Heiva. Someday I'll make it to Rapa, one of the only high islands in the country I have never made it to - there's only one boat every two months!

Aaaaah Moorea

So where do people who live on Tahiti go on vacation? Actually most of us would prefer to leave the country, not because we don't love it here but because we crave variety. Snow, smog, shopping malls - we love them for a few days, love the strange sensation of being truly cold, the edgy metropolitan feel of a city, loud bars, a real cinema and we looooove shopping. Then we're happy to go home. But when budgets don't allow for tickets out we are forced to go somewhere much nicer than LA or Paris, we go to Moorea.

It's only 10 miles and a 30-minute boat ride across the "Sea of the Moon" to what I believe is the most beautiful island in French Polynesia. Of course from Teahupoo, where I live, you have to add an hour and a half driving time to get to Papeete but that's another story. Every time I visit Moorea I wonder why I don't go more often. As the Aremiti ferry pulls out of port in Papeete you get a full-frontal panorama of the city with its newly gussied up waterfront complete with palm fringed black sand beach covered in a mass of local athlete's outrigger canoes painted glossy red, yellow, white or blue. The beige-pink steeple of Paofai Church pokes over the palms as a reminder that the car-clogged city was once a low-key colonial port town; this always makes me a little wistful and reminds me how exotic it is here and how lucky I am to be here. Usually a practicing team of outrigger rowers whisk by the ferry before it reaches the outer reef and heads out of the fluorescent blue lagoon.



Speeding across the Sea of the Moon, pods of dolphins sometimes follow the ferry for a while and on occasion you might even get to see a breaching whale. We didn't see any marine mammals on our way to Moorea on this trip but watching Papeete get smaller from the windy upper deck is always a delight. Then, as Tahiti turns abstract all eyes turn to Moorea.


Moorea is perfect. The near vertical peaks are cut at angles so sharp and teetering that they look like the work of some strung out artist with a straight edge. Unlike Tahiti which is a heavy mountainous glob, Moorea has valleys that chisel their way around the sharply delicate peaks allowing the sun to shine through unencumbered by vast shadows and the whole place feels bright and open. Meanwhile the lagoon is as blue as any Photoshopped postcard you've ever seen and slender white sand beaches line the coast.



So what did we do on Moorea? Not a lot. We have several good friends on the island and most of our time was spent catching up over rum punch and sunsets. We did get to see a fabulous dance performance by a troupe from Rapa, the most remote island in French Polynesia and I'll get to this (with pictures) in my next blog. In the meantime, sweet Moorea dreams. I'm back on Tahiti and a cold (for here anyway) and windy storm front has come has come in so I too am missing the tropical sun.