Fire festival to light up Waiohiki

Charla Hawaikirangi practising for Friday's fire festival. Photo/ Neill Gordon

Traditional poi skills include a lot of percussive beating of the poi against the body, however, there will be none of that at Friday's fire festival.

Poi and taiaha skills will be transferred to fire poi and fire staff for the free community fire festival at Waiohiki.

Fire arts workshops have been running for several weeks in preparation for the Earth, Food and Fire night from 5pm to 10pm at the Waiohiki Creative Arts Village near Taradale on Hawke's Bay Anniversary Day.

As well as food trucks, live music and 30 fire sculptures lighting up the arts village, the evening will include three fire arts performances.

Kath Hawaikirangi and her daughter, Charla, each has a lifetime of traditional poi behind them but are finding transitioning their skills to fire poi an interesting challenge.
Each is having to unlearn their poi skills, Kath says.

"The weight is very different, the fire poi are much heavier. With traditional poi you could do poi for half an hour or more, but with fire poi it would be a 5-10-minute bracket at most because of the weight and also how long the fire poi will stay alight."

Traditional poi skills also include a lot of percussive beating of poi against the body "but I won't doing that with these [fire poi]".

"The movements can't be compared. The way we throw the poi around is a lot freer than what, for me anyway, I can do with fire poi."

Charla says in former days the poi was used by the men to strengthen the upper arms and the upper torso in readying them for use of weaponry.

"The poi came in two lengths, the short poi where it was beaten against the hand or the body depicts the heartbeat of Papatuanuku, but when the long poi were twirled in intricate patterns it depicts all of our native birds in flight."

About 20 people have been involved in the fire arts workshops and they will perform in three groups about 7.20pm, 8.20pm and 9.20pm.

Six musical acts will provide entertainment while people enjoy food from Black Betty BBQ and vegetarian fare from The Dosa Project.

A key focus of the event will be two Te Ahi Kaaroa sculptural tributes to the village's master carver Hugh Tareha, who died in May.

The two sculptures have been designed and built by Hawke's Bay artists Ricks Terstappen and Lance Greaves and supported with funds from the Hastings District Council's Creative Communities fund and the Port of Napier.

Sculptors contributing work to the event include John Woodham, Glen Colechin, Asaki Kajima and Katie Metcalfe.