Lakeside School

Every summer, groups of Lakeside students embark on Global Service Learning trips around the world. Students write blog entries to document their learning and share aspects of their experience. The following post is from the last part of the group’s stay in French Polynesia.

Dance. I won’t get all philosophical and ask you “what makes something dance?” or something like that. But I’m sure that you know that in French Polynesia, on the Island of Raiatea, in the village of P., dance is our main service.

I’ll be honest, at first, dance didn’t feel like service. Sure it was difficult but, in what way are we serving this community? Every weekday we’d do our service projects, working at the AME, gardening, etc, things that clearly helped the people or environment here. But from 4-6 pm.. we would go and practice dance. At first, I’m sure, the movements felt weird in all of our bodies. I’m sure they still did on the night of July 15th when we finally performed. But even with all the time and effort put into this, it was still hard to tell, what made this service?

There’s a reason why we didn’t just learn any genre of dance back in Seattle and hold a fundraiser there, and shockingly, it’s not just for the excuse to travel here. After years of colonization by the French, Tahitians had been stripped of their language and their culture. Although some of the elderly only really speak Tahitian, it’s clear that many young people put more effort into learning English than the language of their people. Of course, I don’t blame them for this, English is the language of media, or power, of the rich. But the preservation and future of this culture is (as I’ve heard so many times on this trip) in the hands of the youth. Which brings me back to dance…

I think the importance of our service goes far beyond dance. We’re embracing a culture that was taken from its people and in a small way, helping to preserve it. In every dance, us or otherwise, one is keeping this rich culture alive. By coming here and doing this, we are showing that we care, that there’s value in taking the time to learn. And in my opinion at least, we’re encouraging the local young people to dance. If not because it’s fun (I can confirm, it’s quite fun), rather, as a local, how can you let a foreigner, much less an American be better at your tradition than you are? I’m not sure if that’s exactly what’s going through people’s minds, but I imagine that’s what I’d be thinking if I lived here.

Now that you’re hopefully done questioning our service, I’ll tell you about the show. The theme for Heiva this year is: love. Not just romantic love but love for others, the land, the water, and all that there is. We’ve been spending the past month (more like 2.5-3 weeks) preparing for this. Learning the Orero (traditional acclamation of where one introduces oneself and their people, in Tahitian of course), learning three Tahitian songs, and seven dances plus the one guys only dance, plus the two best dancer solos (they were incredible by the way). When the night of the show arrived, it was surreal to say the least.