Lanterns, Dances & Theatre: A Multi-cultural Feast

Auckland is definitely multi-cultural:  In March we witnessed cultural performances from China, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, New Zealand Maori, and New Zealand Pakeha (caucasian) perspectives!

The month started with the Chinese Lantern Festival, helping to usher in the Chinese year of the dog.  Held in the Auckland Domain (a huge public park near the central business district) the festival centered around hundreds of displays of carefully crafted lanterns strung up in the trees.

The lanterns were both traditional and modern in design, with birds, dragons, and even sheep and sheepdogs portrayed. Along with the lanterns were various cultural performances, including our favorite, the Dragon Dancers (see photo at the top of this blog).

Later in the month we attended Polyfest, a huge, 4-day competition for high school cultural performances. It was held in a large sports complex, with outdoor stages for Maori, Samoan, Cook Island, Niue, and Tongan performances. At each stage, the native language was being spoken by the emcee as well as the performers. And each performance included traditional singing and dancing.

It was fascinating to see the different costumes from these island cultures — the grass skirts and leggings from Cook Islands, the woven grass “mats” that the people from Tonga use, the bright colors of the Samoan cloaks, etc. We also enjoyed learning how each culture had its peculiar gestures: for example the Maori “warriors” stick their tongues out, while the Niue “warriors” hiss. Apparently this is the largest polynesian cultural festival in the world, with over 9000 people attending. Here are some links to snippets of a few of the performances:

Maori performance

Niue performance

Between these two festivals we also went back to the Pop Up Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. The cultural twist here was that the “faeries” were presented as Maori, and spoke te reo (the Maori language) instead of Shakespeare’s English. It was fascinating to watch, and the actors spoke the language so fluently, and mimed what they were talking about (such as putting the love potion into people’s eyes) that it was quite easy to follow their part of the plot. It was a fascinating way to emphasize the difference between the two worlds/cultures that Shakespeare was playing with.

From left: Puck, the Titania the Fairy Queen, and Oberon the Fairy King, decked out in Maori-inspired costumes and speaking te reo (Maori).

Finally, March was also the Auckland Arts Festival month, and we took the opportunity to see 2 shows: Max Richter’s Vivaldi recomposed and an avant-garde theatrical performance called “Body Double” by two young New Zealand actresses. This was a wild two-person show that used multiple perspectives and techniques to re-examine romantic relationships and sexual desire. For example, in one scene, one actress reads out loud an excerpt from Anna Karenina, while the other actress mimes the facial expressions of Anna and the Count into a camera, which displays her facial closeup onto a large screen.  In another vignette, a “romantic scene” from a Hollywood movie was displayed (without sound) while one actress re-enacted the scene with a blow-up doll and the other actress recounted what might have been going through the woman’s mind while all of this was happening. It was a thought-provoking way to shine a light on how our thoughts about sex and romance are shaped by the modern, western culture that surrounds us each day.

Richter’s remix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was, quite frankly, a disappointment. It only highlighted the superiority of the original. The remix attempted to develop the minimalist elements of the original while stripping out the original’s drama and narrative, which of course is its essence. So you were left with a vapid series of repetitions with no purpose. Give us the original any day!