The Heiva: Tahitian dance & music

A spectacular of epic proportions.

Jul 10, 2024

It’s the second year that we’ve travelled to Tahiti for the night to attend the Heiva, a festival of Tahitian dance, music and craft. Every year in July, hundreds of dancers, musicians and singers make their costumes and take to the stage in an impressive display of skill and athleticism.

Last Friday we arrived in the city in the afternoon for an indulgent lunch at Citi D’Or (a regular favourite), check in at Fare Suisse for the night (another regular favourite), a few happy hour cocktails Le Moana (great view, weak drinks), and a quick takeaway from Restaurant To’ata (finally, somewhere that does good sushi!).

Source: https://www.facebook.com/HITOFFICIEL

Then onto the stadium at Place To’ata where we took our (very narrow) seats in time for the first dance act, TĀ'AI. One of Emile’s friends, Laëtitia, was dancing in this group but it was almost impossible to find her amongst the 150 or so dancers on the stage.

The story was all in Tahitian, so it was a bit hard to follow, but Laëtitia explained it to us afterwards. A chief who had lost a wife and a daughter and was in despair, the spirits warning him about an upcoming coup, a woman who could speak to the spirits and to his departed daughter to warn him of the betrayal. Not understanding the story made absolutely no difference in how much we enjoyed the spectacle!

According to Laëtitia, the dancers were all up around 3 in the morning to get started on their costumes. With the Heiva ending at around 10:30pm, that’s a big day!

While a lot of the costume could be made in advance, a big part is made from fresh leaves and flowers and has to be made on the day. The dancers had 7 costume changes all up. That’s 7 extremely detailed costumes and headdresses.

Imagine making this. Now imagine making this another 6 times.

Dancers have a total number of points, and judges remove points for various reasons, such as losing your headpiece or parts of your costume. One dancer in the second group (Heikura Nui) lost his pareo, which is how I discovered that the male dancers wear g-strings under their (rather skimpy) costumes. It was a comedy of errors watching another woman try to put it back on him while he was still dancing.With how vigorous the dancing is, I’m impressed that there weren’t more casualties.

Within each of the group dances, there’s a male and female soloist competing for best dancer, and a musical display from the band. There’s also singing and drumming performances from different groups between sets of dancers.

The second dance group was Heikura Nui, who performed a creation story of Ta’aroa and his shell. Once again, I didn’t worry about understanding what was happening, and instead just enjoyed the colour and movement.