polynesian dance performance

I'm not necessarily known for my grace or coordination - if anything, I'm probably known more for my lack of grace and coordination. Dancing is not one of my strengths. And I'm not being modest, it's just not. There are things I do well and things I don't. Dancing falls into the latter category. In spite of that, I joined a Polynesian dance group, Tui Moana. It's amazing exercise (you use muscles you never knew you had!) and a lot of fun.

The group performed just a few months after I started dancing with them. I was supposed to perform too, but chickened out because the dance we were supposed to perform still hadn't been made up (errr, choreographed) two weeks before the performance. I was too new on the island to be comfortable with that level of unpreparedness.

Apparently I just needed a few more months on the island... Last Saturday I performed with the group. There were fifteen of us so this picture is just a portion of those who performed (just those who happened to be standing around when Clif was available to take the picture).


I knew I would be performing one of the dances we had learned earlier. We were learning another dance too, but it was never finished. Just a week before the performance the group decided to scrap the new dance and perform a dance that some of them had done before (affectionately known as the "yellow dress dance" because they originally wore a yellow dress when they first performed it). I wasn't sure if I could learn it in time, but managed to pull it off in a week -being conveniently situated in the back and middle of the group during the performance helped! And, just to keep you on your toes, the "yellow dress dance" was done in the green/red dresses and the yellow puletasi was worn during the Samoan number.



We performed at the Tradewinds Hotel at a fundraising event in order to send a different dance group to Hawaii for a dance competition (although as Clif cynically pointed out, if we had just given the group the amount we spent on costumes, they would probably have made more money). There were fifteen different dance numbers and our group did two of them. I love watching the other groups dance.


Everett is fascinated by Polynesian dancing so he was mesmerized all evening. He even volunteered to get up on stage while the emcee was stalling between numbers.


Simon... well, not so much:


In keeping with Samoan tradition, the final dance was a tauluga. The tauluga is a dance performed by a taupou at the end of important events. A taupou is the daughter of the matai (high chief) and usually a virgin. She is important as a symbol representing the purity and beauty of the girls/women of the village. During the tauluga, people throw money at the taupou, but throwing money isn't just reserved for the tauluga. Anyway, here are pictures of the tauluga; the one at this event was performed by Miss American Samoa. The crazy headdress she's wearing is called a tuwinna and it's my favorite part of the traditional clothes the taupous wear.