Keywords

1 Background

In this chapter Linda Ashley interviews dance educator Olivia Taouma about some of the background within which her narrative approach to the chapter is contextualised. In providing an explanation why her approach of telling stories is an integral part of Oceanic culture the short interview also provides some complementary Western theory placing the chapter at a cross cultural intersection that is highly appropriate for this book. This interview is followed by Olivia’s story.

As mentioned in the introduction to this book, as editors David and Linda were aware that the book should be inclusive of a range of different voices and writing styles from the Oceania region. Personal narratives were one of the approaches that we were keen to include. In support of the inclusion of personal stories, some theoretical underpinnings are provided to that frame Olivia’s chapter within Jerome Bruner’s (1987) emphasis on the importance of exploring narrative because stories reveal how both meaning and power are structured and play out in people’s lives. By way of this rationale, Bruner (1996) drew attention to how narratives are significant enough to warrant attention. Olivia’s narrative provides the reader with an opportunity to understand how personal stories can bring to light particular ways of responding to socially significant situations such as pedagogical development (Goodson 2012).

Bruner (1996) emphasised that narrative should draw attention to people’s beliefs, desires, intentions and actions, so the voices of Olivia and her students in this chapter act as “both a mode of thought and an expression of a culture’s worldview” (p. xiv). In telling her story about the ways in which she developed her pedagogy, an autobiographical timeline is followed. This timeline and her reflections on her experiences reveal how her teaching supported her Pacific tertiary students, helping them to deal with living at the intersections of Polynesian and Western cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand through dance and music. Their beliefs, desires, intentions and actions surface in the story as ways in which they are supported pedagogically to explore their identities. As revealed in her story, in engaging students to develop their understanding of the arts as experienced through dance and music, Olivia’s pedagogy empowers and helps them to structure social meanings as played out within their lives and communities. Olivia’s and her students’ worldviews, however, incorporate and interface with the cross currents of intersecting cultures. In so doing, as found in Olivia’s story, multiple and overlapping layers resulting at the intersections can lead to some cultural complexities and pedagogical challenges.

In the interview that follows, the theoretical framework is explored and seen to be in the cross currents of cultural flow. In these currents some of the students’ stories, as experienced through learning in the performing arts, surface and tell of crucial educational issues such as identity formation, creativity and Pacific culture growing within a Western educational environment. It becomes clear how stories, glued together by Olivia’s own story of developing pedagogy within a tertiary education setting, form a cultural hub for the chapter.

Linda

In telling your stories, Olivia, I imagine you swimming in Bruner’s “sea of stories” (1996 , p. 147). He envisaged stories as being at the core how we make sense of, and learn about, the world. Can you explain the importance of telling stories in Oceanic culture?

Olivia

Pacific culture is made up of living traditions of oral history and rituals. Traditions and meanings are passed down through the generations via narratives and stories that remain a vital part of the culture and are constantly evolving. Stories are often presented physically through poetry, music compositions and songs, dances and myths and legends. The combination of these is manifested in dance. Poetry is composed with music into song and physically enacted through movement to create a dance. Queen Salote of Tonga was a great example of this. She was a poet, especially of love poems (hiva kakala), which were composed with music into song, and she also choreographed the movement thus creating new dances, like her famous lakalakas.

In today’s world young people growing up away from their Pacific cultural heritage are placed in the predicament of living two worlds, a Westernised world and a Pacific cultural world. Their stories often reflect the conflicts and complexities of these two worlds, and the struggle in finding their identity. Being able to express themselves through their Pacific traditions of poetry, song, music and dance has enabled many of them to create a balance of sorts between the two worlds, where they utilise Pacific cultural compositions and movements with Western theatre forms, structure and framework.

Sesilia Pusiaki, a past student of mine whom I continue to mentor, is a great modern Tongan example of this. She created a cross-cultural Tongan work Sei ‘O Fafine which developed in a series of events from her training in the performing arts and different Western dance forms, as well as life-long learning of Tongan performance. It was important for her to tell her story and express how she makes sense of the world as a New Zealand born Tongan girl growing up in a Tongan traditional family in Auckland, struggling to come to terms with her identity and the balancing act between the two worlds as well as living with a large family and the complexities and dynamics of that. It was a first for New Zealand audiences to be allowed a rare inside view of Tongan life for girls in New Zealand. It allowed these people not only an experience from inside a large Tongan family but also to taste the values that they live by and install in the children. It allowed people to see the beauty, the struggles, the humour and the hope. It allowed Tongan audiences a rare chance to see themselves, reflected, on stage. They saw their own families and teachings and recognised their own successes and failings. It allowed people the opportunity to discuss Tongan culture, values, arts and especially Tongan dance and music. The importance and value of such stories are untold, like a ripple in a pond made by a pebble it will keep having an affect into the future.

Linda

I feel that that your story’s descriptions of creative process and student learning can help the reader to understand how you or your students were brought to reflect on their own dance-lives and the type of challenges that were faced. In relation to meeting challenges as you developed your pedagogy, I found Bruner’s (1996) notion of dialogue, as associated with building mindful practice, to be integral to structuring the learning process. Bruner envisaged dialogue as producing “… cultures that operate as mutual communities of learners, involved jointly in solving problems with all contributing to the process of educating each other” (81). As a reflective teacher, your reflections can sometimes remain unseen. Can you describe any memorable moment perhaps in relation to a dialogue with students and building a community of mutual learning?

Olivia

Dialogue and communication within a community is key to how I teach students to develop a work. Pacific culture is about the ‘we’ not the ‘I’. I liken it to the saying that it takes a village to raise a child, so to does it take a village to create a work. A student of mine who was fakalaiti (transgender) was struggling with creating a work that had strong Tongan and Samoan foundations. She and her dancers felt vulnerable about the possibility of being told off or offending people from these cultures. I held a private showing of her work where I invited other emerging and established choreographers, who were from these cultures, including elders of high cultural esteem. The feedback they gave her was not only supportive and encouraging but the Tongan elder even stated that she could tell people how much he supported her work and to take courage as he loved her story and can see how important it was for people to experience it and to never doubt herself as she knows within her what is right. This is how I encourage all my student choreographers to work, by creating an environment of a community with the work, not only with the dancers, singers, musicians etc. but also with feedback and input from peers and established artists as well as cultural elders, all of whom will support, push, challenge, encourage and inspire the work to evolve with strong supported foundations.

Linda

I am always struck by how your students’ dance works look different from most other tertiary dance in New Zealand. Their dances highlight Polynesian ways of moving and being. They seem to have a signature trait in the lack of Western contemporary dance vocabulary that can be common in intercultural fusion dance. Can you give an example of the special movement characteristics or themes that produce a distinct Polynesian style and look?

Olivia

I believe Pacific dance comes from within, the movements are taught usually within families, churches or cultural groups but the spirit of the movements that go hand in hand with the song and music lies within the person’s ancestry and blood ties to it, and connects to that person’s spirit. Others can copy the movements but often I have seen this come off plastic, touristy or just plain awkward. There have been very few occasions where I have felt a non-Pacific person has truly connected spiritually with Pacific dances, as it is the spirit that brings the dances to life. It is the va Footnote 1 that connects the person, their bodies and spirit, to others on the dance floor, to the music and song and to the audience. The va must be strengthened from a spiritual/cultural place first for Pacific choreographers, before layering Western theatre and dance forms/elements into it. It is where I believe Pacific choreographers need to understand the value, uniqueness and need for their Pacific movement and stories in today’s dance world. Once they have those strong cultural foundations their stories spring more easily onto the floor and with their dancers. It is not about comparing how untrained they may come across in Ballet and other Western forms of dance, as they are only movement vocabularies to use as tools to express your stories, it is about having belief in yourself and value that your stories need to be told, and what movement vocabulary you choose to express it with is completely up to you. The audience feedback, dance reviews and industry feedback to my graduate students choreographing in New Zealand today, e.g. Sesilia Pusiaki, Amanaki Prescott-Faletau, Leki Jackson-Bourke, Troy Tu’ua, Antonia Stehlin, Katerina Fatupaito, all show that it works very well, and that these choreographers stories are not only important but are moving, inspiring, unique, challenging and innovative to the people they come in contact with. The va has been strengthened and grown.

Linda

If you were asked to give one key reflection on sustaining Pacific dance and/or song in your teaching from when you were developing your pedagogy what would it be?

Olivia

I once had an argument with another dance teacher about if students needed more Western dance training and provision of more ballet in the programme. The belief was that only by learning Western forms of dance you got anywhere in the world, as a professional dancer. They did not understand that I was not interested in the whole focus being about creating professional Western-style dancers. My focus has always been about the students at hand, namely our Pacific students who were studying for a Diploma in Pacific Performing Arts and did not have many dance classes a week. Most come with no Western dance training or experience, or interest in it. My focus has always been to introduce how wonderful and amazing dance is, how important it is, and how valuable their stories are culturally, and also how connected they are to it through their identity and ancestry. This in turn develops a love and appreciation of the art, a connection to it, as well as producing some great, new, innovative choreographers and dancers. It is about the majority, the ‘we’, not the individual, the ‘I’, and I saw the majority of every class graduate with a love, appreciation and spiritual connection and understanding of dance. I see them at most Pacific dance shows in Auckland in the audiences cheering and loving the dance works.

Now we see all the wonderful choreographers and dancers that have come out of PIPA and hopefully better understand why my focus was different, not a typical mono-cultural Western one, and that is partly why they are succeeding today as part of the dance world. If we do not value our Pacific selves, through our cultural movements, and the way we tell our stories in dance, then we are failing as dance teachers and will only end up producing the same type of students, with the same movements and the same techniques of story telling and choreographing as every other Western dance trained student in the world.

Linda

Thank you Olivia. Our conversation has confirmed for me why including your oral history in a written form is culturally appropriate and vital to the ethos of the book. In this way, your chapter is also set, aptly, at an intersection of Western and Pacific culture. So let’s hear your story.

2 Introduction

As Helu-Thaman (as cited in Airini et al. 2010) states:

Because the cultural identity formation of most Oceanic people is relational rather than individualistic, it follows that the spaces or vā between and among persons, or between a person and his/her environment, together with the frameworks that determine such relationships, must be nurtured and protected. Understanding the significance of the notion of vā and educating for its continued nurturance and maintenance are central to any discussion about education for inter-cultural understanding in Oceania, if not globally. (p. 4)

A Pacific student is connected in so many complex ways to their ancestors, aiga (family), church, community, ethnicity and culture. They connect on a relational level to people and concepts, which have to be taken into account in their education. Thus, a term I like to use in teaching is ‘cross-cultural education’, taking the best of both worlds with a foundation in and reflection on our Pacific students growing up as Pacific Islanders in a Western country, New Zealand.

3 My Story

Coming from a large artistic family, with a Sāmoan family history of dance teachers and musicians, I don’t think I fell far from the tree. I came to New Zealand from Sāmoa at the age of four not speaking English in 1979. Being a new migrant and having to learn a whole new language and culture impacted on my life and in later years the way I teach.

During this time growing up in Auckland my mother, of course, enrolled me into the first ballet class aged four saying: “Copy that woman in the front”. This was the start of my long relationship with Western forms of dance from ballet to jazz, hip-hop and contemporary dance. I loved it all and spent most of my afterschool days, and holidays, at the now defunct Limbs Footnote 2 and Auckland City Dance Footnote 3 studios. Here my passion for dance movement and expression through the body developed in different styles and ways. I hid my insecurities of feeling ‘different’ and ‘other’ through an indifference in classes where my teachers didn’t know how to reach me, to push my natural dance potential, as they couldn’t relate to me and I still couldn’t relate to that woman up in the front I had to copy.

I recall seeing and meeting my first brown dancers of Western dance forms in class when we got to watch the Limbs dance company in rehearsal, and I was transfixed by two stunning male dancers, Taane Mete and Taiaroa Royal, who are still stunning the world today. I could not take my eyes off of them as it was the first time I had seen someone up there on the dance floor I could identify with and see that there was a place for people like me in Western dance.

I was taught Sāmoan dance by my stern and strong tempered grandmother, Italia Meleisea Taouma, who did not suffer fools easily and taught in the old ways with a tight rod in hand. She was one of the members and dance teachers of the now famous Western Sāmoa Teachers College,Footnote 4 who are famed for their dances, song recordings and performances, so she had a high level of expectation in Sāmoan dance of her grandchildren.

My father, Dr. Papalii Pita Taouma, was next as I toured schools and universities with him as a demonstrator and assistant, teaching people about Sāmoan dance. This was my first hand experience teaching ‘other’ ethnicities about my culture and art form. It was the start to a long career in teaching.

In 1996 I choreographed, danced, directed and produced my first full-length dance show entitled ‘Words Unspoken’, which was based around ‘identity’ and its many different forms that impacted on my life. It was a ‘cross-cultural’ contemporary work that fused my Samoan dance movements and culture with my palagi (Caucasian) side and contemporary dance. It was the first time I started to develop a way to express this feeling of being ‘other’ and who I am as a person and as an artist. A time where I felt the need to express myself through my identity as a cross-cultural person, experimenting with mixing my Sāmoan cultural movements with my Western dance training, creating cross-cultural movement. Reflecting reflexively on where I fitted into this Western world and how I identified myself there, I was a part of a new generation of Pacific Islanders growing up in New Zealand and experiencing such things as culture and language clashes.

4 Cross-Cultural Education, the Beginning

When I first started teaching dance, in 1997 as a trained teacher,Footnote 5 it was at a decile 1 Secondary school, Hillary College.Footnote 6 This school was in the heart of south Auckland, where a high proportion of Pacific Islanders live and where there was also a high rate of low achievement in school. I loved it. I recognised myself here, through the students. It was the first time for these students to ‘study’ dance and, as a lot of them had experience and ability, they found something they were not only good at and loved but also they could study and pass up to a high level at school. It also helped being Sāmoan and being able to relate to a lot of them culturally. It was again a time of experimenting and using different techniques but something that I always worked into the programme was recognising, acknowledging, respecting and supporting their cultures. Fa’aloalo, respect in Sāmoan, was always the number one rule. This cultural connection and reflection helped create a sense of ‘family’ and ‘safety’ in class. This is what I would call teu le va. Dr. Melanie Anae (2007) explains that Va—or vā, va’a, vaha—can be loosely translated as a spatial way of conceiving the secular and spiritual dimensions of relationships and relational order, that facilitates both personal and collective well-being, and teu le va as the valuing, nurturing and looking after these relationships to achieve optimal outcomes for all stakeholders.

Another major part of successfully teaching cross-cultural dance at the school, which is a part of Pacific socialisation, was laughter and fun. You can go anywhere in the world and as soon as you find a group of Pacific people hanging out you will often hear loud raucous laughter. This intermixing of cultures within the teaching environment encouraged the students to feel recognised, valued and a part of the education culture, the class became another ‘home’.

The main goal of mine in dance was not to develop professional dancers, even though a few of them did become this, but was to create robust, holistic, culturally cognisant students. Learning was connected to fun experiences where the students would see and experience dance as a tool to express who they are and what they want to say and it aimed to develop a sense of appreciation for, knowledge about and love of dance for the rest of their lives.

Dance, especially popular social Western dance forms, were a characteristic of these students’ social lives and also a big part of their culture that you performed on special cultural occasions e.g. school socials, church fundraisers, twenty-firsts, weddings. You didn’t lie on the floor and slither across it like a snake or ‘contract’ and ‘release’Footnote 7 your body into different shapes as dancers do in modern dance. These new ways of moving were always met with resistance and apprehension by my students. For them modern, creative or theatre dance felt awkward, different, foreign and strange. They felt ‘out of place’, an ‘other’ and self-conscious about looking at, feeling and being aware of their bodies in this new light as their identity and culture was displaced.

One of my biggest achievements at this school was having such a high success rate of students achieving, and student demand for the classes that the school turned the programme into a performing arts academy, making it into a major programme of the school. My reflection on milestones such as when the majority of the school rugby first 15 team chose to take my dance classes as a subject because they loved it, became pivotal in developing my pedagogy. A few students went further and studied dance at tertiary level, two going on to dance for New Zealand’s contemporary dance company Black Grace.

After 6 years there I decided I needed a change and travelled. This opened my eyes to what was out there in dance, in choreography, but also more importantly culturally. I watched the Alvin Ailey dance company live in a theatre in Harlem and had a new cultural experience which made their show and movements that much deeper and moving. From New York, to Chicago, to New Orleans to Los Angeles, to London and Amsterdam dance changed my view of the world and also my cultural understanding of what dance can be to the person performing it and also to the audience.

5 Cross-Cultural Education in Samoa

The next stop was Sāmoa. After travelling through other people’s cultures I wanted to then live in my birth home Sāmoa; to breathe it for a while. Dance in Sāmoa is an integral part of life and cultural practice not only in the villages but also at school, in the nation’s celebrations, any social function and for any formal occasion. It is such an integral part of life it has the honour of being the finale of any event and formalities, called the Taualuga. When this dance occurs it indicates to everyone present that it is the end of that function. Western dance forms were not taught and I found a handful of people had experienced being taught modern dance a long time ago through different visiting people. There is no theatre as such in Sāmoa or dance companies, just a few young hip-hop dance crews who enter different competitions when they come up. At that time there was no study of dance as a subject in schools or as part of any curriculum. This changed and I was one of the advisers for the new Sāmoa Secondary Schools Performing Arts CurriculumFootnote 8 and also co-writer for the teachers’ guides.

In my teaching I wove basic Western dance exercises, themes, and topics with Sāmoan cultural themes and movements such as the se’e (Sāmoan movement of the feet) and sãsa movements (a sitting dance where hand/arm actions strike out and express everyday activities and life in a Sāmoan village). I taught trainee secondary and primary school teachers at the National University of Sāmoa. Here trainee teachers learnt to have fun while moving their bodies in very different ways. They soon realised they could not only perform these movements, but they could explore movement and their traditional actions. They became more confident in themselves and less apprehensive, recognising that they not only enjoyed it but that their students would love to experience this. They loved that I was Sāmoan and could talk to them, even in my limited Sāmoan, and understand them when they spoke in Sāmoan but also understand their culture and their lives to a much deeper extent than other foreign teachers there. They felt understood, respected and supported and they always knew it would also be fun. This time, I observed how creating experiences in which students could develop a sense of appreciation and love for dance is an approach that may not produce necessarily excellent dancers but it is important in terms of advocacy for including dance in education, especially in school classrooms.

6 Shaping My Pedagogy: Reflections on Constructing Identity – Past, Present and Future

In 2007 I moved back to New Zealand, now with a husband and child, and started as the Head of Dance at the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts (PIPA), a new tertiary course in Auckland that offered a Diploma in Performing Arts (Pacific). Here students learnt Pacific Studies and Pacific Performing Arts as well as Western forms of acting and dance. It was the first time I had come across a tertiary institute directly focused on Pacific achievement and cross-cultural development taught in the performing arts.

In 2009 I became the Head of Pacific Studies as well as Dance. This is where I started to really build and shape my personal pedagogy into a cross-cultural educational, holistic programme and environment for students. The student was not seen as just another number or a blanket ‘student’ label, where everyone is treated ‘the same’. Instead I actively tried to build a culture of va, developing the students’ senses of belonging, acknowledging, understanding, community, self belief, respect, identity, appreciation and encouraging experience of awareness and love as individuals, as a group and cross-culturally. I created a curriculum and planned learning experiences in a 2 year programme for the students across their subjects that would support these underlying values, and help create a ‘family’ environment of acceptance, respect and support for cultural roots.

A group of students discussed the educational culture I had created in my classes. Sesilia Pusiaki described it as “family orientated – a home away from home. Classmates are brothers and sisters. When one person falls the whole group falls”. Critchley explained how he felt valued, and Maika described how he felt in touch with his ancestors, seeing the then and now (Ashley 2013a, b, p. 17).

Students with gender identity struggles thrived in this environment as they found acceptance, self-value, respect and a sense of being part of a family that loved and supported them for who they are and not what they were born with. They often shone as dancers and choreographers. A great example of this was a group of PIPA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQFootnote 9), graduates who formed the dance group Fine Fatale. They have been creating innovative, cutting-edge cross-cultural works in Auckland since 2010, and are a shining success that a lot of younger LGBTQ performers look up to.

It became very clear after teaching here for a while, that unlike the students I had previously taught the majority of these students struggled with their cultural identity. It became imperative to me that the students start their journey at this school learning about themselves and their identity before they started learning about other people’s stories. The first topic became ‘identity’. Through their genealogy, students would learn about themselves, their ancestry and their family stories. This helped shape their perception and understanding of self, growing cultural roots to help develop strong foundations from which to create and explore. The students also learnt about each other on a very personal, deeper level, which helped create more connection, understanding, appreciation and respect for each other and their cultures: the va was strengthened. It was cathartic as many students here would state they felt ‘plastic’ and ‘lost’ about their Māori or Pacific culture before undertaking this project. There was a disconnection which they felt, and this project helped start a reconnection to not only their cultures but also their families and peers; a lot of them had family issues and social problems. An example of this was where a young very thin and under fed, shy, unconfident unkempt boy started the year stating he didn’t know anything about his Māori side and that it was ‘plastic’. By the end of his second year he was standing tall, proud, and confident performing a beautiful dance work wearing a stunning Korowai,Footnote 10 expressing his Māori cultural heritage and identity. Importantly, immersing the students in their own culture and learning of other Pacific cultures, gave the students a sense of pride, identity and place in the world.

Through lessons by Pacific elders, historians, writers, artists and teachers, these cultural seeds were fed from deeper roots. One elder I always brought in was my father, who taught me and gave me the confidence and approval to explore. He explained quite simply that Samoan siva (dance) has evolved like every other dance form over time, and that when you use the word ‘traditional’ it is only a particular point of time you are choosing to slice from its history, as before that time the dance form had many variations and will continue to do so through its relationship with people, time and place.

Having Pacific elders or Pacific specialists come in and teach our students, encouraged and gave students belief in their own voices and work, that they are valued and what they want to say is important. Such visits helped the students find themselves artistically and have the confidence to explore and experiment in their cultural foundations. When it was time for the students to explore their own creativity and voices to express what they wanted outside of the safety and confines of school many looked to their cultural roots and experiences to develop exciting, innovative and culturally layered works. Examples of this can be seen through the work of graduates such as Sesilia Pusiaki, Troy Tu’ua, Leki Jackson Bourke, Katerina Fatupaito and Antonia Stehlin to name but a few.Footnote 11

In dance I encouraged them to find and express their identity, especially in choreography. Beginning with exercises that were stripped back to movement at its simplest. One of their favourites was walk-the-catwalk, whereby you have to walk the length of the room and back with the attitude and expression of your culture and your life, show us who you are just by walking. Another involved eyes closed, lying on the floor, thinking about what the music or sounds make you feel and allowing the body to naturally move to the sounds. These gave students shared experiences of awkwardness, apprehension, shyness and fear, due to being completely physically aware of yourself and your feelings in a raw state. The more exercises of self-discovery through movement the more they trusted, discussed, shared and laughed, and saw and developed real connections and relationships, again the va was strengthened.

In developing a sense of safety, trust and community through shared experiences of ‘awkwardness’, they also learnt to ‘let go’ of any defense walls in class, and when they got into learning new and different techniques the more they would participate openly. The more they participated and practiced, the more these new movements became part of their bodies’ dance vocabulary that they could execute well and perform in confidence. Combining this with an equal dose of cultural satire, respect and much laughter created an environment where the students saw a way they could express themselves through exploration of not only Western movement but also their own cultural dances. Cross-cultural dance was new, exciting and unique to each of them, it allowed them the freedom to just be.

There were always a few students who shied away from dance and were not confident enough in their bodies to fully open up. One of my biggest hurdles with teaching Pacific Island students was to create an environment whereby everyone felt comfortable to dance no matter your weight or size, especially for the girls. Young girls are age appropriately self conscious, throw into that Pacific Island culture of religious humility and modesty and you will see why contemporary dance could have some barriers.

After lessons of teaching them correct alignment, softening through the ground, landing through the feet into the ground, contracting and release and falling techniques, the dance students soon realised, especially in the floor work, that having some natural cushioning really helped. Once you have a bigger person in the class landing softer than half the class just through technique you have the whole class engaged. I once brought back one student who was overweight but he could dance beautifully, with flowing floor work and leaps which landed so softly, demonstrating that weight and size is not a barrier and that in fact in some cases can be your strength. Interestingly, a few of these students went on to develop their dance-selves through acting jobs where they were required to move and dance. I meet up with them still today and they often laugh about those shy days and running away from themselves, but now see the importance of it all and appreciate everything they were taught.

Cross-cultural fusion in dance however, can cause offense for some traditional gatekeepers, which is why having cultural advisors is important. Therefore, having visits from established Pacific choreographers, such as myself, Charlene Tedrow, Neil Ieremia and Lemi Ponifasio, to act as role models and mentors inspired the emerging creatives, showing them a future pathway for themselves in this industry and world. For instance, PIPA graduate Amanaki Prescott-Faletau choreographs work so unique and boundary-less that she is forging quite a career already in Auckland. She pushes the boundaries not only in her movement vocabulary and stories, but she also creates dance for non-theatre spaces like the botanical gardens, galleries and for digital art works and television. Throughout her choreographic work she retains her cultural roots and connects to them seamlessly. She has experienced first hand the real value in the industry through her cross-cultural dance works. An example of this can be understood better through this review of choreography with her dance group Fine Fatale:

The complex and furious co-ordination of measured arm gestures and hip sways, the affirmative attack in their movement, and the predatory sassy catwalk sashays smashed quite a few conventional boundaries. In fact the combination of siva and Voguing, and whatever else is on fire in this clash of tradition, masculine, feminine, past, now and future brings a brave new world of dancing in Polynesian Vogue. (Ashley 2013b)

Although this is fusion dance what this review highlights is how characteristic Polynesian movement vocabulary such as hip sways and articulate arm gestures feature predominantly in the overall look of the performance. Whereas, Western vocabulary dominates in some contemporary indigenous dance. I remember New Zealand choreographer, Douglas Wright visiting PIPA in 2012 and saying to the students: “In the Western world they don’t want to see my work, they see that everyday over there, they want to see all of your work because it is different, unique and something they have most probably never heard of or seen before”. This helped students see value in their stories and creative work outside their micro-worlds.

7 Dance and Music in Pacific Cultures

A part of my story that would be helpful for the reader is to outline two key ways in which dance and music function in Pacific culture, because it was crucial to include them within my pedagogy.

First, Pacific ownership of traditional songs and dances are connected to the person, their families, villages and country. There are very different rules for each country let alone composer, but there is some leniency granted in rearranging Samoan songs if the recording information states the name of the original composer. Tonga and Niue is a very different matter, so learning your history of these Pacific songs, who composed them and why, what do you need to do to gain culturally appropriate permission to use them, is very important.

Cultural appropriation, acknowledgement and intellectual property are other matters students had to learn a lot about when dealing with Pacific cultural dance and song. Learning about their own cultures was not without its surprises for the students, and this became clear in a specific incident when a television crew wanted to film our students singing a Pacific song. The students had been taught many songs from different Pacific Islands but had decided to sing one they loved for television, which one of them who was not the ethnicity of that Pacific song had re-composed into a funky pop version. The students concerned didn’t have a staff member guiding them or present during this filming. When the episode went to air the students were proud and excited which soon turned to sad and apologetic. The Pacific family who had composed the original song complained to the television programme about the terrible composition of their song that was sung and filmed without their permission and which they found culturally offensive. This brought up great issues for the students to not only learn from but to discuss and understand so that this mistake would not be repeated.

Young people assume that many of our Pacific songs are just out there for anyone to do what they want, but in fact in some cases they are written, composed and published by people/families in the Pacific Islands and in Western countries today. Just like the Australia Performing Rights AssociationFootnote 12 in New Zealand copyright music, Pacific communities have the Pacific grapevine where anything on television, on the internet or in the paper gets across very fast to the people who actually own the song, more so if it is shown in the same country they live in. In this instance, the students’, PIPA’s and the programme’s apologies, along with withdrawal of the song on its online episodes, was enough to appease the family and a great lesson learnt for all of our students.

Second, a Pacific approach to the relationship between dance and music can be found in the word faiva. I use faiva to describe the relationship between song, music and dance in Pacific cultures. It is Tongan and represents the interweaving of the poet (song composer), music and dance through more than just performance it also is a cultural reinforcement of Tongan values (Shumway 1977).

Students at PIPA and emerging Pacific performers in dance use faiva in the form that the song, music and dance are integral to each other and are performed together. A great example of a contemporary version of this is Sesilia Pusiaki’s (PIPA graduate 2010) dance-theatre work Sei ‘O Fafine in which every dance scene is supported by three on-stage singers who come in and out of the show like a Greek chorus. Sesilia uses Western theatre techniques interchangeably with traditional Tongan faiva. The songs are picked specifically because of their lyrics and musical compositions; dialogue at times is poetic prose, all to support the scenes taking place through dance movement in the show. This ground breaking Tongan contemporary dance-theatre work is a great example of an artist who has very deep cultural roots and cultural support – she knows who she is. So when she tells her stories she can interchangeably move between both her Tongan and Western worlds, as well as interweave these worlds around each other on stage without causing controversy or cultural offense.

What is so surprising to many is the fact that Sesilia sees this work as Tongan first and as a contemporary Western work, second. Sesilia pointed out that her work is first and foremost grounded in Pacific traditions, but it is also “about you and the work you want to create” (Ashley 2013a, p. 17). Because of the cultural roots Sesilia has found supportive roots from which to create and explore, especially when she was breaking new ground and creating history in the Western theatre space through Tongan cultural foundations. This work has been developed over 4 years, with eight showings, and in all that time there has not been one complaint or cultural offense taken of the cross-cultural works use of Tongan cultural song, music and dance (faiva).

Leki Jackson Bourke (PIPA graduate 2012) completed his first choreographic work through the annual Pacific Dance Choreographic Lab event in Auckland.Footnote 13 He based his work around firstly Niuean song, music and dance through his experiences and feelings of and about Niue and certain parts of Niue’s history. It is a cross-cultural contemporary dance work that interweaves two worlds, Niuean dance and Western contemporary dance. This is done smoothly through Leki’s Pacific foundations in Niuean, Samoan and Tongan as well as contemporary dance and choreographic training at PIPA. Explaining how his work with song, dance and music at cross cultural intersections Leki Jackson Bourke described how he had been helped to develop his own Pacific identity in the context of Aotearoa and that in “finding my foundation and my cultural heritage I also think about the people who came before me… honouring their journeys and stories”, (Ashley 2013a, p. 17). His work will continue to develop, as will more emerging Pacific contemporary dance works, as artists look to choreographing more works that cross over and reflect on their two worlds of being Urbanesians.Footnote 14

Dance works, such as those made by Pusiaki and Jackson Bourke use faiva and va successfully. In fact both faiva and va are so integral in Pacific dance works that often people do not even know they are doing it. I find when I envision dance works, or workshop a work, it comes naturally and is something I find always surprising when others analytically dissect it out in a point or reference. Today I see many young emerging Pacific choreographers writing poetry and songs, performing spoken word and combining it into their dance works thinking they are being innovative by using different inter-art forms. In fact they are following an innate sense of faiva and va, that lies within their cultural-self, that they may have been brought up with, it is in their blood and ancestry and surfaces through their artistic work and expression.

7.1 From the Cultural Roots Will Grow the Tree

In developing my pedagogy I have sometimes reflected on internationally recognised Sāmoan author Albert Wendt’s statement from an online interview in 2012 with Maryanne PaleFootnote 15:

We need to write, paint, sculpt, weave, dance, sing and think ourselves into existence. For too long other people have done it for us – and they’ve usually stereotyped us, or created versions of us that embody their own hang-ups and beliefs and prejudices about us. So we have to write our own stories!

Immersing my students in this ethos has helped them see they have not only value and a place creatively in this world, but that there is a need out there for more Pacific creators to tell their stories.

I also align with Thelma Perso (2012) when looking at the students we teach and their cultures, we must look within and without for a deeper understanding. We must then act on this knowledge, turning our understanding into better subjects, programmes and curricula. I believe cultural roots that are acknowledged, respected, shared and experienced in a class will create a strong teaching environment whereby students will feel recognised, valued, supported and happy in their learning. This underpinning belief has helped create more success in dance for my Pacific students. Exploring cultures and learning more Pacific dance, music and history will create stronger Pacific contemporary choreographers and artists who will be able to draw not only on their Pacific cultural roots but also Western forms of dance, theatre and technique. This is an exciting time to see this being developed right now in New Zealand, telling me it is a new wave that will keep on growing and that currently has a real presence in the world of dance but has an even bigger future ahead. In the end it is up to the students to pick up the challenge to create and I am now seeing the fruit of that through graduates who are continuing to explore and push the boundaries culturally and successfully. From their strong cultural roots these Pacific artists are growing into even stronger trees, branching out into the global world of today.