Nikao action song dress rehearsal

Like the previous video, this one is also about four-and-a-half minutes long and for the same reason, to give viewers a better impression of the action song (kapa rima) the Nikao dancers, drummers and choreographer produced for the 2009 Maeva Nui cultural dance competition.
Sharp-eyed people will probably spot that not all the costumes have been completed. Also, in the final performance the young warriors at the beginning of the dance were carrying gifts of food. You have to use your imagination here.
The dancers have different costumes for each of the four dance sections but the ute (chant) is usually a pareu uniform while the pe’e (legend) is made from rauti and other greenery and is prepared just before the competition performance. The amount of work that goes into the drum dance and action song costumes is enormous but, as I mentioned in the previous post, Nikao came first in the costume section so the effort paid off.
The dress rehearsal was a pretty intense affair with all four items performed then at the end of the night some of the experts in the audience came up with criticism and suggestions for improvement.
Only one dance is performed on competition nights - it must have been a piece of cake after the rehearsal!
The standards at Te Maeva Nui get higher each year and Nikao placed second in the kapa rima.
Congratulations to choreographer Piritau Nga and his team of assistants as well as to the dancers.
(The Ministry of Cultural Development videos all the performances and DVDs are available on their website.)

Nikao drum dance dress rehearsal

This video is a bit longer than usual, 4.5 minutes, but I wanted to show more than just a few highlights of the drum dance performance by the young people of Nikao village.
The effort and enthusiasm they show are wonderful and if you’ve seen any of the earlier videos about Nikao preparing for Maeva Nui (cutting hibiscus, preparing kiriau and practicing) the changes are remarkable.
As well as the dance practices, the dancers have to make their own costumes, with a bit if help from the village mamas, former dancers, friends, relatives and so on. There are four sections to the Maeva Nui competition and two of them (drum dance and action song) have very elaborate costumes so by the time of the competition everyone must be very tired. All that effort for just a few minutes on the stage!
In this case everyone would think it well worth while because Nikao took first place in the drum dance and costume sections.
In fact Oire Nikao won the costume, ura pa’u and pe’e sections, came second in the choir and kapa rima sections and shared third place in the ute section with Nukuroa.
As Cook Islands News reported, “It was a thrilled Nikao team that received their winning prize of $15,000 and danced in celebration just to show that the week of dancing hadn’t taken its toll on the young performers.”
(The Ministry of Cultural Development videos all the performances and DVDs are available on their website.)

Rarotonga’s tennis legacy from the games

‘Legacy’ was one of the four pillars of the Pacific Mini Games (the others were Mana, Tradition and Winning Hearts).
The idea was that the games would leave a legacy for the people of the Cook Islands (well, Rarotonga at least) in terms of sporting facilities, equipment and expertise.
I’m not sure what, if anything is happening with the Telecom Sports Arena, the BCI Stadium and the new bowling green but tennis is certainly living up to its promise.
Every evening and all through the weekend there are kids and adults using the courts and during the school Christmas holidays one of our medal-winning tennis players, Brittany Teei, took time out while on holiday here from New Zealand to run a coaching clinic for youngsters.
According to Cook Islands News twenty-year-old Brittany used last year’s Pacific Mini Games as a springboard to re-launch her tennis career after spending six years recovering from a broken ankle.
Teei broke her ankle while representing New Zealand as a 14-year-old in Germany and while most would have chucked in the towel – she put her coaching hat on and ran her own coaching programme at the Ngatira tennis club in Mt Eden.
“When I broke my ankle I naturally went into coaching to stay in the game I love,” says Teei.
Teei won three medals at the mini games tennis competition – bronze in the women’s singles, silver in the women’s team event and gold in the doubles competition with Kairangi Vano. Now she has her eyes firmly fixed on achieving her first ranking at next month’s ranking competition in South Korea and qualifying for the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games by competing in the Australian Amateur Open in September.
“The mini games were a big highlight for me and to reach a top 100 ranking is my ultimate aim in tennis,” says Teei.
The women’s tennis team was a big success at the games winning silver in the team event, gold in the doubles (Brittany Teei and Kairangi Vano), plus a gold (Kairangi Vano) and a bronze (Brittany Teei) in the singles.
The video includes Brittany in the singles and both girls in the doubles as well as other Pacific islands singles players.