Night Time Events

Every evening during the Festival there are performances held all over the island. We've been trying to go to a different venue every night to get a taste of all the different activities going on. Here's a sampling...

On Tuesday night we went to the Tradewinds hotel to watch a band from Rape Nui. Here are Danny, April, and Naomi dancing on the lawn at the show.


On Wednesday Night we went to the Pavillion to see the Solomon Islands, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Rapa Nui, Taiwan, American Samoa, and Kiribati.

Papua New Guinea has 820 indigenous languages and hundreds of different culture groups. I think about 10 different culture groups are being represented at the festival. They all wear very different clothes and perform entirely different dances. Here are Sarah and I with one of the culture groups from PNG.


There are nearly 1000 islands in the Solomon Islands and the residents speak 74 different languages. This information would have been impressive under any other circumstances but unfortunately the Solomon Islands followed PNG and the crowd was still trying to figure out how the PNG government actually managed to function with over ten times that many languages! Here are some dancers from the Solomon Islands.


On Thursday we went to see a play about a Maori soldier fighting in WWII. It managed to be both humorous and really serious and touched upon a lot of important historical events. Unfortunately cameras were not allowed in the auditorium.

On Friday we went to see the show at the stadium. There were dancers from French Polynesia, Fiji, American Samoa, and Papua New Guinea. However the highlight was the World Fire Knife Dance Competition that took place after performances.