Easter Island Visitor’s Guide - Page 16

2008 Tapati dates: February 1 - 17

Please reconfirm these dates with your hotel or residenciale prior to travel, as the dates are subject to change.

The yearly Easter Island festival, Tapati Rapa Nui, began in 1975. Back then, it was a song and poetry festival organized to attract tourists. Today's sophisticated productions feature native dance, chant, and song, and competitions such as horse racing, woodcarving, fishing, kai kai (string figures), traditional body decoration, a parade, and a queen contest. The festival has become so popular that it has now been extended into a two-week event.

Tapati occurs at the height of the Summer season, usually at the end of January and the first of February. The dance and song performances generally are held in the island's gymnasium but many are also out of doors, in front of one or another of the great ahu platforms, such as at Tongariki or Tahai. Some of these are more like "dance-drama" performances. An example would be the recreation of the first landing of Hotu Matu'a, enacted at Anakena or Ovahe beach, by torchlight.

A few of the sports competitions, such as spear fishing, have drawn Polynesians from other parts of the Pacific who come to test their skills. Since the filming of a Hollywood movie that was made on the island in 1993, the festival events have taken on a more sophisticated gloss. This is particularly evident in the parade that occurs near the end of the festival. The parade features decorated floats, each bearing a queen contestant, and accompanied by supporters dressed in native costumes, singing and dancing by torchlight along the parade route. As the movie encouraged the girls who were participating in it to bare their breasts, some women now appear topless in the parade.

Some of the sporting events are notable in that they are based upon ancient sport activities. One of these is called haka pei and it involves sliding down a steep hillside on the trunk of a banana tree, wearing little more than a hami (loincloth) and body paint. The contestant who stays on his log to the bottom and who goes the farthest is the winner. This suicidal competition has to be seen to be believed.

Another unusual event is a triathlon-type contest that involves swimming, paddling on totora reed bundles across the lake at Rano Raraku, and a race around the lake with a pole across the shoulders that has huge banana clusters at each end. All this is done in bare feet and the usual hami with body paint. Recently other ancient skills have been added to the competition. These include making mahute (barkcloth), chipping obsidian to make stone tools (mata'a), a shell necklace-making contest, and a contest to make the best small stone statue in a limited time span. One of the competitions involves displaying family-grown produce, with the winner having the best display of local vegetables and fruits. Another is a display of wood carving that takes place in the school gymnasium, and an art exhibit of local painters and photographers.

The dance competitions include the usual sexy Polynesian dancing, but they also have a childrens' night, a contest for the older islanders, and dancing competitions that feature more modern music, dating from the days of the sheep ranching activities.

The crowning of the queen is always a big event, for the competition is very fierce and pits family against family. The queens amass points from the competitors, all of whom are competing in the name of one or the other of the queen candidates. The competitors are usually related to the queen's family unit. Thus the contests take on a social aspect as well as that of status in the community. The crowning of the queen happens on the last Saturday night of the festival. But the following night, there is an impromptu alfresco crowning held at the nearby archaeological site of Tahai where, by moonlight and torchlight, another crown is placed on her head, accompanied by chanting and singing.

Peripheral to the contest activities, this is a general "party time" on the island. Little other work gets done, there are dances and parties aside from the actual festival program, and the discos run until morning. The islanders "party hearty."