Tadra Kahani

"Tadra" is fijian for "dream" and "Kahani" is hindu for "story." Fiji is about half indigenous Fijian and half Indian, those who's ancestors were brought here by the British to work the sugar cane fields, &tc.

Tadra Kahani is a dance festival where schools compete to tell a story through dance.

I went to watch the finals last night. The primary (elementry) schools competed first and were way cute. The secondary (jr. and high) schools were next, and were kinda boring after the kids. But there was a fierce rivalry in the audience with the biggest Suva school getting the most support naturally.

My favorite was a school was one that broke out in kung fu fighting between the christians and muslims. It featured all kinds of costumes representing different cultures. A close second was the one with the food theme, "ending poverty and hunger" where there were little boys gyrating dressed as dalo (taro) plants, the staple here, though I didn't get that they were holding what was supposed to be dalo leaves until the end.

Of course most acts also had kids dressed in traditional costumes waving spears or doing indian dances.

It was sponsored by the UN, and so each dance had to have one of 8 officially sanctioned political themes. Not surprisingly, the winners were the ones that were most on message, the messages being most favored are HIV/AIDs (it is celebrated like a fetish plague by some people. Not the locals, the intellectuals recieving billions of dollars to spread "awareness" -- whatever that means) and evironmentalism (the message being that any kind of progress is bad for the "environment" -- whatever that is.) The environmental message stood in ironic contrast to the ending poverty and hunger, and the provide clean water themes.

The opening act was particularly disgusting when they had primary school students suggest that unprotected sex was occuring -- complete with death dancing among the couples, but then the children dressed as condoms came on stage everyone was free to copulate joyously.

For the primary schools, the AIDs and environmentalism messages tied for first, and for the secondary schools, one that combined all eight messages won, with what was also by far the most enthusiastic and fun dance for the older children, but also included dancing condoms.

It was disappointing to see the filth of that bizarre religion has reached even here. I don't see why they needed to take the UN money, the event was definitely self-supporting (despite the protests of the MCs that it was not) with a stadium of 5000 people paying $7 each and plenty of local sponsors.

Despite all that, it was quite entertaining. And you could easily forgive the children for the indescretion of their elders.

Sorry, I didn't mean to make this such a tirade. I'm not really a moral crusader. It really was nice except for a few bits.