You may attend a performance during a shore tour to the Maori heartland of Rotorua. Visitors have many opportunities to see the country’s indigenous dance form. I can celebrate, grieve, support or protest.” When I do haka, I feel alive, connected with my tupuna. “Whether that be through the use of eyes, hands, legs, voice or tongue, the whole body is used to speak. “We Maoris use our whole body to express ourselves,” notes Kateia Daniela Burrows, owner of the Manaia performing arts company. Classic kapa (“to stand in a row”) haka (“dance”) features a combination of moves, postures, gestures, chants, songs and stories. This is kapa haka, the traditional Maori performing art and one of New Zealand’s best known cultural experiences. The dancers slap their chests in unison, stomp their feet, leap high and land with a thud as they scan the audience with threatening eyes, poking out their tongues. There is the haunting cry of a conch shell, followed by a shout, and the war dance begins. Wearing little more than dramatic facial tattoos, the Maori dancers take center stage.
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