e- Newsletter May 2006 | Polynesian Cultural Center

LAIE, Hawaii — As the popularity and practicality of using the Internet continues to grow, the Polynesian Cultural Center provides an excellent surfing site — web surfing, that is — at www.polynesia.com.

If you've visited the Cultural Center's web site before, the first thing you'll notice at polynesia.com is our all-new interactive design and rich media content, created by the PCC's advertising agency, Salt Lake City, Utah-based Richter 7.

Scroll across the image at the top of the home page (partially shown above), for example, and you can choose from a variety of brief video clips that depict just a portion of the adventure that awaits visitors to the Center, including:

Of course, you can book PCC tickets online anytime from the convenience of your home or office, which results in some major advantages, including:

Then there's a wealth of information that can help you make a decision to come to the Polynesian Cultural Center or, if you've already been, relive your experience, including:

"The Cultural Center is committed to providing people around the world with a wealth of online information and services," says Kealii Haverly, PCC's Director of Hawaii Sales who oversees the web site. "We've actually had a web site for almost 15 years, which is very long time in this medium.

"This latest version of our web site is our best — so far, and we hope you not only enjoy it, but use it... to book tickets, check up on the Center, and pass along to your friends and relatives who might be planning a visit to Hawaii.

"Using the Internet to contact and deal with the Center is a great way of letting us share our aloha with you," Haverly says.

Check out the Polynesian Cultural Center's new web site today. But be forewarned: It's "sticky" — a term web developers use to mean it's so interesting you'll probably stay a while to enjoy it.

Samoan World Fire Knife Dance Competition
and Festival to light up PCC this month

Each year this special event provides a thrilling opportunity to see the world's finest Samoan knife dancers, and enjoy the vitality of hundreds of Hawaii high school students competing in traditional Samoan crafts and sharing their enthusiasm and energy in songs and dances.

The 2006 fire knife competition includes at least 21 brave young men who will compete for the World Fire Knife Dance Champion's title. There will also be at least 10 Pacific Junior Championship competitors, ranging from ages 12-17; and at least two between ages 3-11.

All the senior competitors who handle the flaming knives with the skill and daring you'll see at the World Fire Knife Dance Competition are amazing, but you'll also be surprised at how awesome the up-and-coming dancers can be.

For example, the 2005 overall champion — then 15-year-old Mikaele Oloa, a Samoan from Orlando, Florida, who decided after he arrived at the Cultural Center to forsake the junior division and compete in the senior division — went home with the top prize of $4,000 in cash.

This year's winner will receive a cash top prize and a six-foot "victory sword" trophy valued at $1,500. PCC's own Pulefano Galea'i, a professional knife dancer in his youth who founded the World Fire Knife Dance Championship, designed this year's oversized, hand-carved and chromed trophy. His design includes elements of four ancient Samoan weapons. Other finalists will receive smaller cash awards as well as smaller chromed and hand-carved trophies.

Mikaele Oloa, who's still in the junior division, will be back this year. He and the others will perform on the following schedule:

• Thursday, May 18, in the Hale Aloha: After the Alii Luau, all senior division entrants will compete. Nine semi-finalists will be named at the end of the program.

• Friday, May 19, in the Hale Aloha: After the Alii Luau, all of the junior division and younger competitors will dance off. The winners will be named at the end of the program.

The nine semifinalists will then compete, with three finalists named at the end of the program.

During the Samoan Festival on Saturday morning, groups from seven Oahu, Hawaii, high schools will compete, including:

In the first part of the program they compete in such ancient skills as speech making, coconut husking, coconut leaf basket weaving and firemaking, with some remarkable... and funny results.

Then get ready for a huge wave of youthful vitality, as each group launches into lively performances of traditional songs and dances.

While most of the participants are of Samoan descent, others join because they want to learn more about Samoan culture. Even for some of the Samoans among them, many of whom were raised in Hawaii, the competition becomes a way to learn more about their heritage... which is, after all, one of the Polynesian Cultural Center's main objectives.

Tickets for Thursday and Friday evening of the World Fire Knife Dance Championship and the Saturday morning Samoan Festival are included in all Admission tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center and for all Kamaaina Annual Pass holders. Please also remember that Kamaaina Annual Pass holders are also entitled to free parking.

For the first time ever, the Polynesian Cultural Center is offering guests who have not purchased full day or admission tickets the ability to purchase World Fireknife or Samoa Festival tickets online. Tickets may be purchased for the Thursday evening, Friday evening, or Saturday morning competitions only. Click here to learn more.

All guests must have reservations for either of the two Saturday evening shows, which will include the finals competition. Book tickets online for any of PCC's full day packages, or for further information, call the PCC’s Reservations office at 1-800-367-7060 or 808-293-3333 or email internetrez@polynesia.com.

If you plan to attend any of the festival events, please note that PCC will be charging those who are interested in filming the event with their own cameras a flat $15 video pass per day, or $30 for the entire festival. Passes may be purchased at PCC on the day of the event you plan to attend. Please also note that the entire event will be professionally recorded this year, so you may want to consider purchasing the DVD's, which are listed below.

Kapeneta 'Kap' Te'o-Tafiti, the PCC's "ambassador" in the Samoan village, thinks this link to culture is very important.

"Knife dancing is a powerful way for Samoans, especially those who have been away from home for a long time, to become connected with our culture again. It's also a powerful instrument to introduce Samoan culture to those who don't know about it," he says.

"When we share our culture in its pure form, people understand what we're about," he continues. "I love helping people understand who we truly are as Samoans, and the way we live and do things."

Kap, who is extremely personable, originally comes from Saipipi, Savaii — the largest island in Samoa, but one with strong ties to centuries-old Polynesian customs. "We lived in a fale [house] just like this one," he says, pointing to the family dwelling in the PCC's Samoan village, "and I had to help cook the food and work in the plantation, just like we explain in our demonstrations here."

Kap came to work at the Center in 1988 as a BYU-Hawaii work-scholarship student and, following a three-year break during which he taught in Samoa, graduated in three dimensional art in 1995. His creative pieces are for sale in the Center's Kaha Ki'i Art Gallery.

He entered his first PCC World Fire Knife Competition in 1996 and started working fulltime at the Center in 1997, the same year he started to seriously learn knife dancing. He has competed every year since. "This will be my eleventh year. My best finish was second place in 2004."

"When I graduated from BYU-Hawaii, I realized that was a very good thing to get into," he says, adding that his older brother, Ah Chew Tafiti, a professional knife dancer, had taught him a few things when he was a child in Samoa and also helped train him in Hawaii. "My brother started dancing in 1974, and he's still going," he says, also crediting former PCC fire knife dancers Sielu Avea and So'o Tufaga for their help.

He explains his own style of knife dancing is very traditional. "There are a lot of baton twirling techniques that are entering into the dance, and it's very exciting, but I think we should draw the lines between the traditional and creative forms. I'm going to help keep the traditional form alive," he says, admitting that the addition of fire, which dates back to the 1940s, is one of the most exciting about the modern Samoan knife dance.

Kap, who is 39 and a very healthy near-vegetarian (like most Polynesians, he loves seafood), says he will "give the younger competitors a run for the money. I've always been physically fit, but when I met my wife, she was a vegetarian, so I changed. Within two weeks I could feel my breathing and my insides changing."

Of those young people he now works with in the Samoan village, Kap adds he sees "a lot of potential in them. This is a great place for them. It's really important for them to learn who we truly are in a Samoan cultural sense."

Byron 'Pailogi' Tenney, a hospitality and tourism management major at BYU-Hawaii, is one of the young students working with Kap in the Samoan village. He's also going to compete for the first time in this year's World Fire Knife Dance Competition.

Tenney is originally from Pesega, Upolu, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which founded BYU-Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center, maintains the Samoan equivalent of a large 7-12 school and a temple. He came to Hawaii in 1994 to attend nearby Kahuku High School, and after graduating, enrolled at BYU-Hawaii for two years. Tenney then served for two years as a Latter-day Saint missionary in Fukuoka, Japan. Consequently, he speaks fluent Japanese as well as his native Samoan and English.

He says he's been preparing for the past year-and-a-half for the upcoming knife dance competition. "I've been learning from a lot of people, including Kap, and just watching the power of their motions.

"Nowadays there are a lot of moves more like baton twirling. Some of these are very nice, I admit, but like Kap and the others, I'm going to try to keep it traditional, and keep that part of the dance going."

Tenney also admits he's nervous. "They've been trying to get me to dance for a while, but this is my first competition. I kept saying I'm not ready, but I figured we'll try it this year and see what happens."

Tenney adds he has learned other aspects of his native culture at PCC, even though he grew up in Samoa. "The chief's language, for example: Because my grandmother raised me, I didn't have the opportunity to go out and learn that part of our language or the 'ava [kava] ceremony... until I came here. That's one of the main reasons I wanted to work in the Samoan village. I love the learning experience and sharing my culture with others."

The 2006 Maori Whakataetae Competition on April 28-29 was spectacular and filled with stirring chants, colorful costumes, hauntingly beautiful music, syncopated action and poi ball dances, and haka or war dances fierce enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck, and make you viscerally understand why ancient warriors used these same actions to prepare for battle.

The other thing that everyone in the Pacific Theater clearly felt was the aroha nui or great love of the Maori people who came together for the Cultural Center's seventh annual event.

For example, though Whakataetae is a judged competition, the three senior groups participating chanted in respect

After the event, one of the judges said, "Your winning group would be able to stand on the stage [of our biannual national competition in New Zealand] with great pride. That was one of the most pleasant surprises for me. I congratulate them. The whole occasion was wonderful."

In addition to the Samoan Festival, other upcoming events at the Polynesian Cultural Center in the near future include:

and is offering several specials on them if ordered between now and during the event:

Scott Bradshaw, who manages the Cultural Center's gift shops, says the DVDs will be ready for shipping approximately three weeks after the event.

"We'll be doing a three-camera shoot that captures all of the action of the knife dance and the fun of the festival, up close," says Bradshaw. "If you like Samoan culture, or know someone in this year's events, you definitely need to order copies of this latest DVD in our extensive series."

DVDs and other Polynesian Cultural Center videos are also available for purchase online.

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Mahalo again . . .

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