Hawaiian Airlines Liberty Challenge Regata Festival
Hundreds of paddlers came to New York City from all over the world. This annual event, sponsored by Hawaiian Airlines and New York Outrigger was a great festival with a variety of family activities offered throughout the day.
A Full And Well-Rounded Event
This event was an extremely busy and full one for Te Ao Mana, as we had taken on several aspects of this project. We prepared a Global Harmony component to open the performance portion of the festival. This included organizing and rehearsing several dancers of various halau hula in New York City to share oli and hula. One particular Mauna Keawa chant was taught in a workshop through APA at NYU led by Aunty Pua Case. This included a hula, choreographed by protector Joshua Lanakila Manguail. She approved our desire to connect everyone to the mauna with our chanting. We also honored members of the Hōkūle’a crew who were in attendance with a kapala gift of our creation.
In addition to our own Te Ao Mana performance, Kaina tirelessly prepared an ohana tent full of cultural activities like lei making, ukulele, and other crafts to those who were in attendance.
Anthony also choreographed another entire Ori Tahiti presentation for our Ori sisters at Lei Pasifika, with the theme poerava. We really wanted to have as much participation from our community as possible and for the event to be a success.
And of course, it wouldn’t be complete without having the audience get up and dance with us. So Anthony led everyone in a basic Ori Tahiti dance lesson.
Looks like everyone did very well!
