Every summer in Tahiti (French Polynesia), the Heiva Dance Festival takes place, where groups from all over Polynesia come together to compete in a colossal festival of dance, music, and celebration. Based on the overall theme, each group from the Islands prepares their program and competes in front of an audience from all over the world. But beneath the surface of the festivities, the complexity of cultures (sometimes not so glamorous), history of colonization, French nuclear testing program, and traditions are all at play, and this was a focus of ours when we visited one of those groups preparing for the Heiva festival.
In 2022, we (the K=1 Project team) had the privilege to visit and converse with Hei Tahiti, the dance troupe that would go on to win the Heiva Dance Festival that year. Summer 2022 was the first time Heiva resumed the festival after COVID-19, and the theme of that year was Mana.
My conversation with Aremiti, a Polynesian musician who sings about nuclear weapons testing and the habitat destruction in French Polynesia, was part 1 of my films focusing on the intersection between arts and expression of justice and advocacy from nuclear weapons testing. Aremiti had also sung of Mana and its importance in Polynesian culture.
In this film/mini-doc, I largely follow Tiare, the leader of the group Hei Tahiti. I wanted to capture all the elements of the group, from how Mana drives forward their collaborative spirit to the ethos that transforms into their movements. Above all, I just wanted to capture the beauty within every moment of their choreography and the resilience that comes out of it. This project was finished 2.5 years too late, and I’ve already since graduated, but throughout the time that I’ve been working on it independently, doing the coloring, audio editing, translations, and putting together whatever narrative there might be, it just hasn’t felt right until now.
The project would not have been possible without the support of:
Redd Coltrane and Victoire Mandonnaud, who helped so much at the time of filming with interview, technical support, and audio.
Composers and musicians of Hei Tahiti Tiare Trompette Dezerville, Hei Tahiti troupe leader, Tinihei, and Isabel Perez Hernandez, who we spoke with.
Encanto family of K=1 Project, who supported each other’s projects every step of the way.
And most of all, the professors who supported all of our projects at K=1:
Prof. Ivana Nikolić Hughes
Prof. Emlyn Hughes
Prof. Pierre Cristofari
Prof. Anaïs Maurer