Pacific Arts Festival Fire Knife Competition!

After a full afternoon at the Festival Village we headed to the stadium to see the fire knife competition. We were surprised to see that there were other performances in between the fire knife dancing. It made the whole night a bit long for us so we went home before we could see who won, but we loved the parts we saw!

Tahiti started the night off:

Then a Samoan tauluga, followed by part of the fire knife competition.

Yes, it's not just the picture... these kids are really young. I have no idea of their ages, but there was a kids' division in the competition. It was pretty amazing, especially when I considered that both Everett and Simon would probably love to get up on stage and throw around some flaming swords. I'm just not sure that anyone would survive. These kids (and the entire audience) survived and actually did very well.

Then Papau New Guinea:
Rotuma, which is now part of Fiji, but has a different culture:
And Fiji was the last group we saw before we called it a night.

Pacific Arts Festival again

I went over to the Festival Village at lunch again. This time there were improptu performances by different groups from Papau New Guinea in the center of the village. Unfortunately, my camera battery died so I just got a couple pictures.
Check out the guys with the black hats, those things are made out of human hair! I was disappointed about the camera battery issue since it would have been the best photo op of the week so far. The village was fun anyway. Some guys from Palau tried to teach me how to carve. We were all worn out and exhausted from running around so much that we didn't go to any performances in the evening. We could hear Rapa Nui and Taiwan from our house though. The stadium isn't very far away and the volume is loud!

Instead of taking a lunch break the next day, I took off early to enjoy the festival. The kids had been there for a while already, but they were happy to come back and do the rounds again. Going to the Festival Village with the kids is a very different experience. People are so willing to show them what they are doing, and let them experiment with instruments and carving tools.

The kids loved this huge stuffed and mounted coconut crab from Guam.

Taiwan was a special guest at this festival. Simon loved playing the drum that was as tall as he is.
This girl thought Simon was so cute! She couldn't speak much English, but we kept hearing "so cute, so cute" as she showed him things and helped the kids make their pan pipe.

And, of course, I can't leave off a picture of the nose flute. I don't even want to know what it's like to clean that instrument.

This Samoan guy is carving mortals and pestels. Simon had to be torn away. Everett was too busy playing the new pan pipe to care about anything else for the rest of the day.

Ruth was very entertained outside Rapa Nui's fale.

New Zealand tattoo artists. The 2nd guy has amazing face tattoos. And I worry about getting a tattoo in a place that I could easily cover it if I wanted...

Simon with a half-way woven Autralian eel trap on his arm.

Hawaii.
Clif and Tim:
Ruth and some crazy palm frond weaving.

Tongan wood carver, with Simon still mesmerized by carving.

even more Pacific Arts Festival

I decided that since I could spend my evenings watching the performances, I should spend my lunch breaks looking at the other arts so we headed over to the festival village. Every group had a fale with things for sale from their island and demonstrations of traditional crafts: carving, weaving, tapa cloth making, tattooing, etc.

Many of the crafts were similar or the same. Weaving and tapa cloth are done nearly everywhere in the Pacific. There are subtle differences, some that I could catch, and I'm sure there were others that I overlooked.

Niuean basket.

These baskets from Papua New Guinea were very different from most other places and a clear hit among festival-goers. Nearly everyone I know ended up with at least one.

Tonga had some huge tapa cloth! Tapa cloth (siapo) is bark cloth, made out of mulberry bark, and lots of Pacific cultures used it for clothing before fabric was so easily available. Anyway, it ranges from fairly soft to stiff, depending on the quality. I've seen some that looks like it would make a tolerable skirt and some that's rough as sandpaper. I have never seen tapa anywhere near this big before though.

There were carvings from Palau that start like this:

And end up like this:

Someone from Guam carved a partially-husked coconut shell to look like lovebirds.

The kids and Ruth got to hang out and watch Tonga perform while I headed back to work.

In the evening, we went to the Fogotogo Malae to see more performances. Ruth was pulled up on stage by a guy from Rapa Nui. When she first got here, I took her to dance class with me for a few weeks. It turned out to be a good thing, she knew exactly what to do!

We saw the dancers from the Solomon Islands.

We saw indigineous people of Australia.

We saw more groups from Papau New Guinea.

And, we even saw a group from Kiribati, a place that I would never have known about if it weren't for The Sex Lives of Cannibals, a book written by an American guy living on Kiribati. It's pretty funny and a good representation of what life is like on a small island in the middle of the Pacific.

more Pacific Arts Festival

As a disclaimer, I know I'm going to go into way too much detail on the Arts Festival for most of you, but it was incredibly cool and something I doubt I'll get to experience again so this is partly for me and partly for family, who actually do care what we did at every moment of the day.

When we showed up to the first official day of the festival, some of the groups from Papau New Guinea were out in full traditional dress - koteka included.

We watched the dancers from Tahiti and Everett got pulled up on stage.

Oh, and Everett is wearing an ie faitaga (ie for short) in this picture. It's basically a formal lava lava, with pockets and a waistband. Clif wears ies to work nearly every day and both the boys have a bunch of them. As part of their school uniform the kids can wear shorts or ies. Everett wears his more often than Simon, probably about once a week.

We watched performances by some of the Papau New Guinea groups. Papau New Guinea is so big with so many different cultural groups that I had a hard time keeping track of names of the different groups.

Ruth and the kids got to hang out a bit longer after I went back to work. I was jealous that they got to see the pan pipers from the Solomon Islands perform again.

And Fiji. Little did I know that we'd end up seeing some groups over and over and others not at all. The Festival's Program wasn't always accurate, but I can't complain. It was an amazing thing to experience.

In the evening, we went to see some performances at the stadium. New Caledonia was incredible. I love the Maori (New Zealand) group. The women were amazing with their poi. It doesn't sound very impressive since it's just a ball on the end of a string that they swung around as they danced, but it was really cool. And, of course, I'll never get tired of seeing the haka!