Culture Moves!

Dances of the Pacific Islands are not only for entertainment-they are cultural and artistic expressions closely tied to the history, belief systems and oral traditions of island cultures. Pacific dances have strong spiritual as well as political connections. And an entire conference devoted to these connections and Pacific island dance will be held at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand this November. Culture Moves-From Hiva to Hiphop will be the first international conference on Pacific dance that brings performers-both traditional and contemporary-together with dance scholars and choreographers. The conference will also include dance master classes and a dance costume exhibition. The Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawaii and Pacific Studies at Victoria University are organizing the event. www.hawaii.edu/cpis/dance/index

Tapa is a traditional as well as contemporary art form. Photo: Robin DeMeo

People, Art and Ideas On the Move

Dance is not the only thing that is moving. Pacific people, art objects and ideas have been continually on the move within, beyond and back to the Pacific. Pacific peoples migrate to other shores looking for work or an education and bring their culture with them. Art objects leave the islands to be housed in major museums around the world, and some eventually return home. Artists are influenced by change and are trying new art forms that have their roots in Pacific tradition. All this and the artistic exchanges that are taking place with Pacific art around the world will be the focus of a conference, Pacific Diasporas: People, Art and Ideas On the Move, held by the Pacific Arts Association at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, this month.

Among the topics to be discussed are pandanus mats of New Guinea, art photography in Samoa and the Pacific Wave Movement in Sydney, Australia. www.pacificarts.org/symp.

Celebrating Canoes The ancient art of canoe building lives on and is celebrated at a two week Canoe Festival at Lahaina, Maui in Hawaii every year. Palau Canoe Builder At Festival. Photo: Keobel Vitarelli Without the voyaging canoe and the development of way-finding, the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia would not have been settled by the ancient voyagers who took these incredible journeys across the vast Pacific Ocean. For Pacific people, the canoe symbolizes invention, craftsmanship, resourcefulness, communication, survival and adventure. Various styles of canoes were made for long voyages, for trade, warfare, for fishing and for racing. In May, master carvers from Tahiti, Tonga, Cook Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, the Marshall Islands and Palau built their canoes in Maui while spectators watched on. The celebration culminated in a dramatic sunset sea launch of the completed canoes. "Our Ancestors Define Us": Hakiwai The director of Matauranga Maori at New Zealand's innovative Te Papa Museum, Arapata Hakiwai, was the keynote speaker at the Hawaii Museum Association's annual conference in May, and addressed the role of the museum in the Pacific today. Museums are being redefined and Te Papa is an example of this new outlook. As Arapata explained, "Our ancestors are still present and celebrated. They live in us and we in them." In his view, museums are not only a repository for treasured objects but can be places of reflection, celebration, encounter and education. Museums can be connectors to our cultural identity and can give us a vision of what we can become rather than what we have been. Musuems have the power to uplift the spirit and be a living link to the past.