Native Hawaiian tattoo artist Keone Nunes at work at Ninth Festival of Pacific Arts held in Koror, Palau, in July, 2004. Photo: Courtesy of Mapuana de Silva

Like the Olympics, this Pacific arts festival happens every four years

By Liza Simon / Ka Wai Ola

There is nothing quite like the Festival of Pacific Arts. Picture artists from 25 Pacific island nations coming together to preserve and innovate – and you'll have an inkling of just why this 36-year-old mega event is considered Olympics of Pacific Islander arts.

It will be held this summer in Pago Pago. How fitting, since Samoa is one of the first places voyagers are believed to have made landfall before fanning out into the Pacific. But no matter how far away settlers sailed, navigation by the stars enabled continued comings and goings and cross-pollination of music, dance, painting, drama, tattooing, woodcarving and even architecture. In the 19th century, Westerners arrived and created the boundaries illustrated on the modern map. But the Festival of Pacific Arts celebrates the commonalities that unite the native peoples of geographically far-flung islands.

Just ask kumu hula Mapuana de Silva about the “chicken skin” moments with members of her Hālau Mohala 'Ilima when they represented Hawai'i at previous festivals in Palau in 2002 and in New Caledonia in 1998: “Even though the various island dances differ in their structures, you can see a similar expression especially in the simplicity of older, traditional performers,” said de Silva. Another commonality, de Silva observed, is that island artists love sharing their talents, while island audiences love expressing their appreciation by dancing and singing along, like a huge kanikapila, where spontaneity blurs the line between spectator and stage.

In the spirit of sharing, de Silva, the director of the 2008 Hawai'i delegation, won't only be featured with her hālau on the festival's official stage in centrally located Tafuna; she will also be leading dancers, artisans, actors and musicians to Samoa's outlying villages for impromptu performances. In de Silva's experience, this is where the coming together of geographically distant island nations takes on heartfelt meaning. There was the time, for example, at the New Caledonia festival, where she and her hālau arrived in an outlying area, far from the island capital, only to find that the native peoples had walked for days and waited for hours to greet them. “They had never seen Native Hawaiians before,” explains de Silva.

As part of a traditional New Caledonia welcoming ceremony, the village elders planted trees by kneeling and digging bare-handed in the soil. When it came time for de Silva's dancers to follow along, they did the same. “They were surprised because they thought that Hawaiians are so westernized that we would be uncomfortable with such rugged activity, so they were very impressed that we didn't use the shovels offered to us,” recalls de Silva, who was likewise very moved. “They told us that the tree-planting would always symbolize our presence and our job now was to come back again.”

Meanwhile, back on the main festival stage in New Caledonian capital of Noumea, the purist dance style of Hālau Mohala 'Ilima made quite an impression, going a long way to dispel notions of flashy commercial hula – a stereotype that is apparently present in the Pacific. “We were so well-received that (festival organizers) increased the number of our scheduled performances,” de Silva said.

De Silva's adherence to native tradition underlines one of the founding purposes of the festival. The idea for the fest originated in 1956, when several island cultural leaders conceived of it as a way to safeguard traditional arts against commercialism that was seeping into the South Pacific with the dawning of jet-age tourism. The first festival was held in Suva in 1972 with succeeding festivals every four years organized by a pan-Pacific committee of leaders in various fields of the arts.

Hawai'i first accepted an invitation to the festival in 1976. Some say that in subsequent years, problems of last-minute organization befell the Hawai'i delegation, when the state administration, which receives the official festival invitation, did not act fast enough in getting the word out to native artists. The logistical challenges of transporting dozens of artists with costumes, instruments and oft-times fragile implements to and from remote Pacific destinations are daunting. The late Keahi Allen was among the many celebrated Native Hawaiian artists who volunteered her time to meet the challenges and keep interest in the festival alive locally.

This year's Hawai'i delegation promises to appeal to a rainbow of aesthetic sensibilities. Noted playwright Alani Apio will be presenting his theatrical production Kāmau, a searing commentary on indigenous identity in contemporary Hawai'i. His contribution is sure to please those who like their art with an edge, but Apio says it is, nonetheless, in tune with the festival's emphasis on the unity of Pacific art traditions. “Even though stories from all over the Pacific differ, I've always marveled at how you can see right through to the same things that matter – it's land, it's genealogy, it's about connecting to deep family roots.”

This year's fest, which is expected to draw 2,000 participants, takes place from July 20 to Aug. 2. For information, go to www.pacartsas.com.