Where there is movement, there is life.

While culturally based dance traditions continue to evolve across Oceania, there have been explicit attempts to create more Pan-Pacific styles of movement by combining actions that draw upon multiple cultural sources. Such styles attempt to invoke a regional identity above and beyond cultural or national boundaries. Some people see this move as empowering, and others find regionalism to be less relevant in their everyday lives and to their more pressing local and national identities.

Hip Hop has become extremely popular in both the African diaspora and the islands.

Wary of the devaluation of indigenous culture and removal of land rights during and after the colonial period, others staunchly resist cultural "borrowing" and see music and dance and the visual arts as property that must be protected from theft. This approach is not necessarily reactionary, as indigenous knowledge has always been carefully guarded by clans, families and gendered groups across Oceania. The debate on copyright or cultural theft has now become central at the Pacific Festival of the Arts — much to the dismay of those who see borrowing as part of the valuable process of cross-cultural exchange and in the past a show of respect for those who were emulated. Critics blame the increasing economic market for cultural products as diminishing people's desire to share.

In most Pacific cultures the human body and its movements connect multiple worlds across time and space reflecting both old and new experiences.

Nevertheless the Oceania Dance Theater at the Oceania Center for Arts and Culture based at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, groups like the Nyian dance company based in New Caledonia, and the Polytoxic group out of Queensland, Australia represent a vanguard of cross-cultural Pacific performance. Choreographers of Pacific descent have also taken their place within the modern dance world particularly in New Zealand with groups like the all-male Black Grace Company and in Australia with the Bangarra dance troupe. The techniques of modern dance are thus used to tell stories that are particular to indigenous histories, motifs and story-telling modes.

For many Pacific peoples, dance is one of the crucial threads that bind past, present and future.

We have already seen how indigenous groups in Guam have had to recreate their dance traditions by borrowing from others, but this practice is not unique to Guam. A similar process has occurred on Rapa Nui, borrowing from Tahitian and Cook Island forms. To some degree all Pacific cultures learn from each other or exchange styles of performance. Sometimes the incorporation of other dance styles is subtle and benign to existing relations and other times it is highly charged with political ramifications. For example, Banabans, displaced by the British from Kiribati and now living in Fiji, have also recreated their dances from Kiribati, Tuvaluan, Cook Islands, Tahitian and European elements in opposition to what they perceived in the late 1960s and 70s as a dominant Kiribati style. In turn, the faster tempo and style of Banaban dance has transformed dance back in Kiribati.

As on Guam, a similar re-creation process has occurred on Rapa Nui, borrowing from Tahitian and Cook Island dance forms.

Musical genres emerging out of the African Diaspora have also influenced Pacific styles since the early 1970s. Hip Hop, for example, has become extremely popular in both the diaspora and the islands. You will find Polynesian and Micronesian kids in particular popping, locking and breaking across the region. Roots reggae, while less influencing the modes of formal dance performance, for decades has shaped popular Pacific musical consumption and production. The most widespread indigenization of reggae has occurred across the islands of Melanesia and by Pacific Islanders and Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Recently techno music has also been blended with older chants and melodies to created a fusion of Pacific and global sounds.

In most Pacific cultures the human body and its movements invoke and connect multiple worlds across time and space reflecting both old and new experiences, relationships and values. By intensifying the physical experience dance serves to temporarily transcend mundane social realities. While we don't always have the language to decode all movements, we recognize that the potential weight of performance, the will to life and survival underwrites the fact that for many Pacific peoples, deeply rooted in and proud of their cultural identities, dance is one of the crucial threads that bind past, present and future. Perhaps the body is the last bastion of agency in this globalizing world and if we give up our dances and their associated musical forms we many no longer know ourselves. Where there is movement, there is life.

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