Notes on a Tahitian Dance experience

Today my heart is soaring, yet it is only out of a sadness that I am aware of this "incredible lightness of being". We will soon leave Papeete and I attended my final Tahitian dance class today. I will make an attempt at describing my experience at this unique school. The "Heiragi Ecole de Danse" is this amazing (and I am sorry to say rare and unusual) space where women of many ages and backgrounds gather to study Tahitian Dance. The owner whom I fondly refer to as "Il Generale" is of Tuomotan heritage and infuses the school with a cultural force that proudly displays the beauty and strength of the Polynesian people. She brings a deep sense of her culture and for her it is dance that is a woman's expression of Polynesia. She expects us, the learners of this kind of dance, to come each day ready to work and to keep on working (she often reminds us, " boku travail"), both to learn the dance forms in an exacting yet artistic way, and to know the Tahitian words for the individual moves. When she attends the classes everyone becomes just a bit more serious in their studies, yet she also brings along her big belly laugh that reminds us of our shared womanhood. I call her assistant "La Professora", and she very sweetly gets each dance class started, and the very difficult labor of learning this dance begins almost effortlessly under her guidance. She too brings along a good humor and suddenly we are all laughing because she has imitated our awkward attempts at a particular form, then the laugh is over, now she warmly gives us the corrected move. Many women look in the mirror as they attempt to imitate her; as for me, I am so far from approximating her form that I simply watch her and imagine that it is my body moving with just the same grace as hers. We " ladies of the dance" come in all shapes, our common thread being women joined together in the learning of this art of Polynesian Dance, and it is interesting how beautiful we are each becoming as the work begins to reshape us just a little and gives us a bit more grace. There are a handful of women that are of Polynesian heritage, the two dozen others are mostly from France with a sprinkling of ladies from Australia or New Zealand, and me, the lone American. Children often attend the classes and become a part of the dance. The baby in the stroller who begins to fuss is cooed at by anyone near, the dropped toy retrieved as one of us dances by, and when the fuss becomes a near scream, the baby is suddenly in a mother's arms, the arms usually belonging to "Il Generale or La Professora", the baby now happy to watch our mostly clumsy display from a new vantage point. Newcomers are always welcome in this school, even now as the dance school begins the more serious preparation of their performance for "Heiva", a huge cultural "fete" held in July. "Il Generale", actually Veronique Clement, has chosen the songs and created a choreography that she and Selena, "La Professora", are teaching us. As we learn the individual moves and begin to put them together, she also writes out the Tahitian words to the songs and explains just what our gestures are meant to convey. The dance forms that are often described in the French language are now frequently referred to by their Tahitian names and we students must know the meaning. Since my days at this special dance school have come to an end, Jeff joined me at the class today to take photographs of all of us hard at work. I introduced him to a woman in the class I call "my Tahitian Idol" and asked him to watch her move and attempt to capture that on film ! This woman is much shorter than I and quite a bit more broad, her movements are completely fluid and graceful and she never seems to tire, her hips just keep on circling round and round as if this is the way a woman's body is made to move. The only way to perceive just how hard she is working is to be close enough to see the wet glow of her skin, or when her butt length hair falls out of its clasp as she dances. For me, she absolutely shines with a true womanhood, the kind that many of us belonging to the world of the dominating cultures are attempting to obliterate with our excessive thinness and surgical sameness. If you were to attend this class I think you would agree that the fashion photographers of the modern day are really taking photos of nothing, the emaciated, hollow-eyed, soulless shapes being nothing when compared to these dark- haired, full- figured beauties. My heart soars at this very lovely and surprising experience here in Tahiti, and I know that although I can grow my hair long, clasp it up, wear a pareo as my dancing skirt, it will not be so easy to build a space that carries an equal amount of feminine strength in its architecture as the simple "Heiragi Ecole de Danse". Maururu Roa to Veronique and Selena and all the "dames de danse" of Tahiti.
Ia Orana, Teresa