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At To'ata in Papeete, Tahitian dancers await entry to the stage.

Waiting backstage, these Tahitians dancers will eventually leave everyone breathless.

by Whitt Birnie

 One of life’s greatest pleasures is letting yourself get hypnotized. Adults do it all the time when they lose themselves in lovemaking, or experience a related feeling while sunbathing late in the afternoon on a quiet secluded beach, the warmth and rhythm of gentle waves lapping on the shore casting a spell.  It happened for me again just the other evening while concentrating on the cascading undulations of light grass skirts and long dark hair while islanders performed an ancient ritual dance surely invented to hypnotize.

The small town of Papeete is more than a traditional tourist setting. Gathered outdoors under a starry sky, a warm breeze stirring the palms, the barefooted dance groups were entertaining their families, friends and a few curiously idle outsiders in the annual July fête, Tiurai, now called Heiva.  Easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm for the refined ‘noble savage,’ very alive in the Fenua, their own natural habitat. Months of effort go into the festival preparations: handmade skirts with decorative headdress, scented leis and flowered tiaras, original choreography of traditional legends, new songs and old chants, all are set and recreated for just this occasion.

Whites of darting eyes gleaming, smiling faces with pearly teeth, slender scantily clad bodies decorated in vivid natural colours, raised arms and the universal hand gestures of primitive storytelling, it’s more than a healthy dose of exotic enchantment.  I sensed my mind slipping away as I lost control to an overwhelming power in the native dance. The deep percussion of wooden instruments, blocks and drums, transmitted synchronized sounds at the deepest end of the audible range, the vibrating syncopated rhythms pleasingly loud, entering the body more through the skin than the ears. Only half aware of the others around me, out of the corner of my eye I could see that they were goners too.

And then, all of a sudden, a gentle sprinkling of rain began to fall. No one in the audience moved; we were all under a spell. The dancing female and male bodies, already wet and glistening from exertion, took on a slippery sheen as the cool refreshing droplets encouraged them to redouble their efforts. The dance floor became a shimmering mirror. We were all vibrating with the drumbeats, captivated, the dancers undulating their bodies, throwing wave after wave into their shining grass skirts. Wet, somewhere between warm and streaming, we passed over a bright line into a timeless oblivion.  It passed through my mind that I might already be waiting at the pearly gates, these young adult dancers being just the angels I one day hope to see.

There seemed to be a long moment of silence at the end. I felt like Rip Van Winkle waking up after 250 years, thinking, is this what James Cook and his crew were talking about? Is this why the missionaries were so anxious to intervene? Isn’t this part of the Enlightenment’s idea of the ‘noble savage?’ The silence gave way to bedlam.  People started stomping their feet on the bleachers, hollering for more, encore et encore. The dance troupe wore a single smiling and pleasurable expression of utter exhaustion; no one had the energy to move, let alone wiggle their hips.

So there, that’s what the Tahitians do for fun: they write their own songs, then make costumes and musical instruments from what nature grows and gives them. They are unique. They create dances from their Polynesian legends. The world beyond their shores is ignored. They spend months of evenings learning and practicing their art, socializing face to face, getting lots of exercise in all the right places, playfully joking and flirting while acting and dancing with their many close friends, happily laughing and singing and having the time of their lives.

That’s the truth, the whole truth, I tell you no lie. It was a brief glimpse of paradise; I saw angels, I felt an afterglow, I’d witnessed some of heaven’s chosen creatures dance.