Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/141

Rh visit there it had in addition the Tuhourangi troupe of Maori entertainers, which, I was informed, had been patronized by Lord Kitchener and Madame Melba, in a recent tour of Australia. I went to the Assembly Hall to see "the Maori at home" and to be stirred by the defiant haka and charmed by the rhythmic, pacific poi.

The entertainment opened with a scene depicting Maoris in olden days, and the reception of distinguished visitors. The hosts were a chief of mighty bulk and a number of barefooted women wearing white waists, and red skirts beneath stringy flax petticoats that rattled with every move of their bodies. Several of them had tattooed chins; some wore ties with high stiff collars, and large greenstone tikis, that distorted image of the human form so popular among Maoris; and each had two poi balls, light spheres of bulrush with short flax strings attached.

Following felicitous exchanges between them and the visitors, a lanky chief and a company of girls, came an exhibition of the so-called poi dance, which is more nearly a motion song. The participants were a dozen women, and as is usual in most poi dances, the players stood while acting. Between their thumbs and forefingers they held the balls, one in each hand.

The dance began with a movement of the hips. As the movements became more rapid there was a close resemblance to the hula-hula of the Hawaiians and the otea of the Tahitians, but the contortions were not so violent. Sometimes knees were bent; at other times hand motions