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Marquesas Arts Festival

Festival des Marquises Hiva Oa @Hervé Bré EnezGreen
Festival des Marquises Hiva Oa @Hervé Bré EnezGreen

Dances, songs, kaikai (meal), carving and tattoo ... For four days, from 16 to 19th of December, the party was in full swing in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Arts Festival. Over 1800 participants from all over the Polynesian Triangle (Hawaii, New Zealand, Easter Island) gathered on the theme of "back to basics, to the fundamentals of Marquesan culture."

“Back to basics” is the message delivered for this 10th edition of Marquesas Arts Festival in 2015 through dances, songs and various traditional cultural expressions. I HAAHUA TE Tumu was the theme of this edition and can be translated as “return to basics, to the fundamentals of Marquesan culture.” All Marquesas islands were represented as well as Tahiti, Rapa Nui and Rikitea. In total, nearly 1,350 Marquesan delegations composed of six inhabited islands of the archipelago.

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A key event of Polynesian culture

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The first Marquesas festival was held on the island of Ua Pou in 1986. Since then, the Marquesas Arts Festival is held every 4 years in one of the three most populated islands of the Archipelago: Ua Pou, Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa. This festival brings together four days over 1800 participants from around the Polynesian Triangle (Hawaii, New Zealand, Easter Island). This renowned event offers an opportunity to perpetuate the Polynesian ancestral rites and traditions through language, songs, dances (including the famous Haka), sports, sculpture and of course tattooing.