Polynesian Fire Dancing

Day 5 of my five day blog-a-thon and I have been blogged down with so many posts that I am simply blogged out. Good thing it's Friday! I was first exposed to Polynesian dancing when I lived in Guam, after university. Although Guam is a territory of The States, because of location it also has a touch of Asia, and little bit of Hawaii and a chunk of Polynesia in it. Part of the ingredients to this Polynesian culture is fire dancing.

This heritage extends down the pacific polynesian rim touching as far down under as New Zealand. Amid this pacific triangle is where polynesian culture thrives. I was reminded of this wide Polynesian girth on my visit to the Philippines, where I witnessed some modern Polynesian fire dancing.


Dance is a vehicle for cultural expression. In the Pacific, like indigenous groups across the world, people have carried and passed on their knowledge through oral, visual and embodied traditions for millennia. The performance arts reflect spiritual, political, social, economic and aesthetic values and practices. We can learn much about a people and their history by paying attention to dance and body movement.

Geographically, Polynesia may be described as a triangle with its three corners at Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. The other main island groups located within the Polynesian triangle are Samoa, Tonga, and the various island chains that form the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.

Let's have a look at some types of dances within this triangle.

In New Zealand the native polynesian dance is haka and forms a crucial cornerstone of Maori culture. Haka literally translates as "fiery breath" and a fierce attitude accompanies the performance of traditional haka. Maori culture is deeply rooted in a tribal system in which the protection of land and other resources is paramount.

In Tahiti Polynesian dance was outlawed in the 1820s but made a timid come back in the early 20th century. The costumes only allowed the audience to see the face, the feet and the hands ; the gestures and attitudes were fixed. A renewal only appeared in the second half of the 20th century, but incurred cultural losses from the prior limitations.

While Samoa was politically divided into eastern and western colonial territories in 1899, the Fa'a Samoa (way of life or identity) remained binded. America Samoa is an unincorporated territory of America. American Samoans have been reluctant to disconnect from the United States despite their militarized history. The US military is today a significant source of employment and pathway of migration for American Samoans. Transformations in the arts are taking place across Samoa. This is evident in their dance. Hip hop culture in particular is popular among Samoan youth. They also do the Samoan Slap Dance, or fa'ataupati, which some say traditionally began as as a way to ward off mosquitos.

New Caledonia is an overseas territory of France which officially annexed the group in 1853. The indigenous peoples of New Caledonia describe themselves as Kanaks, a term which actually originates from the Hawaiian word kanaka and used in a pejorative manner by Europeans during the colonial period. Pilou-pilou describes the whole range of ceremonial practices. The pilou involves large numbers of people moving in a clockwise or anticlockwise fashion around a central pole to the beat of percussive rhythms.

The seemingly universal theme in each Polynesian dance is that it rooted and changed by the countries histories.