Poly Fest 09

On Thursday night, November 19, 2009, my friends and I went to go join the celebration of the Poly Fest 09 that took place at the Hale Aloha Courtyard. There were many booths with a variety of cultural activities along with awesome entertainment. Some of the cultural activities held in the booths were Poi pounding, Kava, Samoan Food Sampling, Haku and lei making, Poi ball making, basket weaving, Elei painting and more. The Hale Aloha Courtyard was packed with many people with different ethnic backgrounds. The majority of people there were Polynesian and the rest were students from the dorms.

Although I didn’t have much time to visit all of the cultural activities, I was able to enjoy the performances done by different halaus or groups. The entertainment included dances like hula, Tahitian, fire dancing, Samoan, Cook Islands, Tonga and Maori. These dances were very entertaining and I never seen anything like this dances that they were doing. Majority of the songs that they performed were mostly in different languages. While I was watching the performances, the different languages sung were Tongan and Samoan. Even as I walked through the courtyard, I heard some undistinguishable languages. I assumed that they were either Tongan or Samoan but I’m not quite sure. I was in awe watching the men and women dance to the beat of the drum. Their costumes were also a wow factor. One of the groups’ costumes was made from just Ti leaves and other floral attachments. My favorite part was watching the risky man doing the fire dance with fire sticks. I was getting a little nervous that he was going to get burnt but of course he knew what he was doing. Another interesting thing was how people from the audience would go up and give the dancers dollar bills, shoving it in their costumes while they were dancing. That was pretty impressive and unique. I’ve noticed that all the groups would perform their traditional dance and end with a flare of more recent popular songs and dance moves.

I’m happy that I got to experience this year’s Poly Fest. I enjoyed watching all the different performances that occur throughout Polynesia. It was really fascinating seeing how much support the Polynesian people have towards one another and how proud they are to represent their own culture. I would love to go and watch something similar to the Poly Fest again.