New Caledonia showcases both traditional and "contemporary" Pacific dance

New Caledonia is an overseas territory of France which officially annexed the group in 1853. The indigenous peoples of New Caledonia describe themselves as Kanaks, a term which actually originates from the Hawaiian word kanaka and used in a pejorative manner by Europeans during the colonial period. The French government refused to recognize customary land tenure, confiscating most of the fertile lands and transferring them to settler farmers and thousands of convicts who were sent to New Caledonia from 1864.

Some New Caledonian war dances are performed in a square formation, and others are theatrical and performed in circles.

Though decimated by introduced disease, the Kanak people consistently resisted colonization. With their rights severely restricted and French settlers increasingly appropriating land, Kanaks eventually rose up in violent rebellion between 1878-79. France responded fiercely by destroying villages and relegating the islanders to reservations. However, Kanaks continued to resist and another revolt followed in 1917. The discovery of precious minerals in the 1870s consolidated France's hold over the territory and New Caledonia dominated the global supply of nickel. Kanaks were not allowed out of the reservations until 1946 and did not receive voting rights or secondary education until 1951. Kanaks then began to organize politically and a fierce movement for indigenous self-determination shaped the political landscape of the 1980s and 90s. This resulted in the signing of the Matignon Accord in 1988 between French and New Caledonia political leaders with the head of the indigenous sovereignty movement and a driving force behind the cultural renaissance, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who was later assassinated.

Richard Digoue, choreographer of the New Caledonian Nyian Dance Company, is creating a new dance style that is unique.

According to scholar Raymond Ammann, the term pilou-pilou describes the whole range of pre-colonial ceremonial practices which usually involved grand exchanges of food and other items, changes in social status, important announcements and energetic dance celebrations. The dancers usually created a circle around the central speaker moving rhythmically from foot to foot and emitting a "sh-sh-sh-sh" sound that continues in dance performance today.

French colonization and the conversion to Christianity greatly affected these pilou-pilou gatherings and while the dance and musical elements continued beyond the view of the French colonizers, for the first half of the 20th century the performances drastically declined to the point where confusion arose over the origins and terms for some of the dances. Today pilou is understood to refer to what people call the informal "round-dance" while pilou-pilou refers to the whole ceremonial exchange. The pilou involves large numbers of people moving in a clockwise or anticlockwise fashion around a central pole to the beat of percussive rhythms. Ammann writes that such dances can sometimes last for hours and traditionally it was only performed at night as a means of connecting to ancestors and of dancing with their spirits.

The basic warrior dance body movement centers around the stamping of one foot and hopping on the other in a repeated pattern.

The stories behind the dances vary across regions, sometimes recounting historic events or legends and sometimes describing important events such as the construction of a chief's house or cultivation of yams. Similar to the Maori haka, the activities of warriors are a popular subject of dance reflecting training, attack, defense and the use of weapons. The basic body movement centers around the stamping of one foot and hopping on the other in a repeated pattern. The actions are emphasized by holding pandanus root or straw which sway as the body shifts weight. According to Ammann various forms of mimetic dances exist across New Caledonia. Some are war dances performed in a square formation and others are theatrical and performed in circles or lines or without observable formation.

Along with French Polynesia, New Caledonia constitutes the Francophone Pacific often separate from the Anglophone or English-speaking Pacific in terms of cross-cultural exchange. Nevertheless New Caledonia has established itself as a center of the Pacific arts particularly after the establishment of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in 1988 and the hosting of the 8th Festival of Pacific Arts in 2000. The 2000 festival was significant in that it showcased the "contemporary" Pacific arts for the first time. This trend followed in Palau in 2004. While some festival attendees criticized the presence of French police throughout a festival that was basically created by islanders for other islanders, in New Caledonia musical and dance production thrive in their most creative forms in spite of or perhaps because of continuing French authority.

Katerina Martina Teaiwa, PhD
University of Hawai'i at Manoa