Heiva i Tahiti - Heiva i Tahiti

Heiva i Tahiti

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Most flamboyant of Tahiti’s festivals by far is ‘Heiva i Tahiti’, which is held every July, ‘heiva’ being the Tahitian word for festival. Heiva provides an outstanding opportunity for visitors to witness the very best in traditional Tahitian cultural performances. The festival opens towards the end of June, to coincide with French Polynesia’s Autonomy Celebrations, and extends through most of July, thus incorporating France’s most important national holiday, Bastille Day, held on 14 July.

During Heiva cultural groups congregate in Tahiti from all over the five widely dispersed archipelagos of French Polynesia: the other Society Islands, along with groups from the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Australs and the Gambier Islands.

The main venue for Heiva is To’ata Square, the paved waterfront area in Papeete, alongside La Maison de la Culture. Here is a large, open amphitheatre and stage, as well as a complex of stalls in which traditional arts and crafts are displayed. Recent years have seen a strong revival of traditional Tahitian culture, including singing, dancing, drumming, tattooing and weaving, and all of these are showcased during Heiva as the many groups from the different islands vie with each other for supremacy. There are few more alluring sights than a Tahitian dance troupe in full cry: beaming, brilliantly garlanded girls with long dark hair hanging loose, hips swaying rhythmically, voices chorusing, headdresses and skirts spectacularly colourful, and accompanying them, muscular young men, moving their legs and arms with astonishing speed, dancing almost acrobatically to the machine-gun rapid drumming of the slit drums and the sonorous beat of the bass. The sight is spell-bindingly beautiful, and Heiva provides an extended show of the best singing, dancing and drumming that French Polynesia has to offer.

Each of French Polynesia’s five archipelagos has a distinctive tradition of arts and crafts, including weaving, carving in wood, bone, stone, coral and mother-of-pearl, as well as tattooing, stone sculpting sewing and the making of ornaments. ‘Heiva of the Artisans’ actually begins before Heiva proper, towards the end of June, and extends through to mid-July. This exhibition brings together craftspeople from all over French Polynesia, who can be observed working dextrously with traditional materials such as pandanus, pearl shell and coral. Then during Heiva itself, ‘Crafts Heiva’ runs concurrently with the festival’s performance arts. On display throughout the festival are carvings, ornaments, pareo cloth and tattoo artists at work. One of the most striking craft forms on display is the brilliantly-hued, hand-sewn quilts, or ‘tifaifai’, made by Tahitian women. Each quilt-maker specialises in her own individual patterns, each of her floral designs thus comprising a craft form unique to the maker. Wandering along the Papeete waterfront, studying the arts and crafts on display during Heiva and chatting to the artisans responsible for their creation is a great way to become acquainted with Tahitian culture.

On the sports-fields, streets and harbour of Tahiti during Heiva can also be seen archery contests, javelin-throwing and canoe-racing, while the more unusual of Heiva’s sports are stone-lifting, which originated on Rurutu, in the Austral Islands, and the race of the banana-bearers, in which Tahitian men race each other while carrying large bunches of bananas, tied to poles borne over their shoulders. (Written by Graeme Lay)