Last Sunday afternoon, there were hula dancers at the downtown branch of Ann Arbor’s library. The talented young women from Polynesian Dancers of Michigan also performed traditional dance forms of Tahiti, Samoa, and New Zealand. Their teacher explained the basics of each style and, at points in the program, gave a lesson to all members of the audience willing to come forward and learn.
Anticipation was great before the performance, due in part to the bit of someone’s headdress visible above a shelf in the area being used as backstage. The shape was unfamiliar and moved back and forth in what seemed random patterns. The dancer wearing it was probably browsing the shelves and unaware of any part of her costume being visible to the gathering audience.
The group opened with a hula, the Hawaiian dance featuring expressive, story-telling hands, and feet and hips that keep the beat. My first-grade teacher was Hawaiian and made a crepe-paper grass skirt for all the girls in class—for which our families reimbursed her twenty-five cents per skirt—and taught us lucky girls a hula. As far as I can tell, hula hasn’t changed much since then and, without question, all of us six-year-old novices were every bit as graceful as the accomplished dancers at the library on Sunday.
I wonder what the boys did while we danced. Did they sing the song whose story our hands were telling? It featured fish called humuhumunukunukuapua’a swimming by. I was all in favor of humuhumunukunukuapua’a doing as they pleased. Anything with a name that wonderful should be encouraged in its endeavors.
From the hula, Sunday’s dancers moved to ori Tahiti. Whereas hula is danced to music and instruments, ori Tahiti goes with chanting and percussion. The hands aren’t used for telling stories, and the hips are feet aren’t just keeping the beat. This dance is all about the hips and feet; the motions are more aggressive than in the Hawaiian hula. The costumes included fat, grassy belts that stretched from hip to hip behind the dancer, to magnify every shake of the hips.
Siva Samoa came next. Samoan dancing involves certain expected elements, such as a stylized “run” entrance and greeting the audience. The whole body tells the story, right down to the position of certain fingers. In the Hawaiian and Tahitian demonstrations, the dancers remained standing. In the Samoa demo, the dancers might sit or kneel on the floor, from time to time, and they used more of the stage as well.
Costumes were simpler, more like pretty street clothes: no more grass skirts or hips belts or headdresses or leis. Also, before the Samoan dances, the performers had worn their hair long. For siva Samoa, each dancer had her hair up in a bun, and a flower in the hair beside her face.
The afternoon’s performance did not do all the hulas in a row, followed by ori Tahiti, and so forth. Rather, it featured one dance from one culture, then one from another, then maybe back to the first culture. It was entertaining and flowed smoothly, but made it hard to keep traditions separate from each other. By the time the dancers got to New Zealand’s dance, my brain was full. What I remember most about it was that this dance form, of Maori origin, included poi balls.
Poi balls are balls somewhat larger than tennis balls and made of natural fibers, attached to cords. The dancers hold the ends of the cords and swing the poi balls rhythmically as they dance. Maybe one ball, or a ball in each hand, or three balls at once. The balls describe lovely patterns in the air, and somehow the dancers manage to keep the cords from getting tangled in each other and the balls from conking anyone on the head.
Twice during Sunday’s demo, audience members were invited to the stage to learn some basics, once for hula and once for ori Tahiti. Children and adults flowed forward, and the teacher was very good. In short order under her tutelage, the audience learners moved from mechanical hand movements to more graceful ones. They learned how to bend their knees a little to produce the hip motions. What some of the different hip motions are. The Tahitian tradition, for instance, sometimes calls for a figure-eight movement, achievable if the dancer gets the toe and heel placements rights. And then turning the body in a circle while producing this figure eight and, of course, continuing the toe and heel patterns.
Sunday’s program was fascinating, start to finish. My first-grade teacher would have approved, even though no humuhumunukunukuapua’a went swimming by.
13 June 2025