Pacific Islander Fest

I arrived at the Pacific Islander Fest at the Bowers Museum a tad bit late for my tastes but it turned out that I may have actually arrived in a very timely manner. I’m assuming prior to my arrival, the fest was giving people time to settle in to visit booths, find seating and listen to any opening remarks. A lot of the available chairs were already taken by the time I arrived but I managed to score a pretty good seat and an even better seat as the fest progressed.

There were performances representing Tahiti (and New Zealand), the Philippines and Guam.

The performances were great. I appreciated the diversity of the dancers. The dancers weren’t of one size and shape and there were children involved in the dancing, too! Oh, and men, too! It was great to see men present in the dances. I say this because society tends to automatically think of only women as the sole cultural dance performer.

Do I have a favorite performance? I don’t exactly have a favorite however the Manea Dancers (Tahiti) performed the most during the fest and I want to say that I loved the Tahitian dance done by their two beautiful ladies who were just extra graceful in a performance that involved the hula movement. And the music to that specific dance was just beautiful. (These girls were amazing in all of their performances, by the way.) The ladies were also always smiling.

Kayamanan Ng Lahi was a Filipino dance group that seemed to consist of family members. Their first performance was a solo done by the daughter of the group and my favorite from the group simply because the dance was a lot more complex than it looked. She was balancing candles on head and hands while dancing about. Sounds simple, right? Of course…

Kutturan Chamoru Foundation performed last and they brought a lot of performers! When I say a lot, I mean a lot! This group made sure to bring a good amount of children as well as men, too! (I’m sure the women in the audience were pleased to see the men. They were in loincloths, afterall…) As mentioned earlier, I’m glad men were present as performers. I think my favorite performance(s) from this group would have to be the one where they featured both the males and females in the performances together. The males (children and adults) had their moment in the spotlight, which was nice.

Talking about males in the spotlight, I want to go back to the Manea Dancers and mention that they actually featured men playing the drums (in the background), performing a solo dance and doing the pukana. Kayamanan Lahi Ng also featured two males (fathers) in their performances. Out of all the groups, the presence of men was obviously more visible with the Kutturan Chamoru Foundation and I hope this only encourages some children to go into cultural dancing, seeing and realizing that it’s not something reserved just for women.

I was able to capture a lot of good moments of the performers and yes, I captured moments of the men, too! So, make sure to enjoy my video on the Pacific Islander Fest.

**Click HERE to watch my video on the Pacific Islander Fest!**