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Ufitia Sagapolutele has been dancing for seven years and will feature at the Pacific Dance Festival for the first time. Ms Sagapolutele's piece is called Ave meaning 'to take' in Samoan. She says her contribution to Wahine Toa is about the colonisation of Samoa and a tribute to her deceased mother.
"The main influence was dealing with the lost of my mother and just me wanting to be close with her. It still has the idea of colonisation, but within that it just means myself taking the knowledge that she passed on to me."
The Samoan dancer says her item will include hip hop, siva Samoa and contemporary dance. Ms Sagapolutele will feature six dancers in her piece.
"I'm just wanting to tell a story from six women and their ideas of colonisation, knowledge from their ancestors and parents and that's through dance and spoken word."
She says her mother's death motivated her to learn more about her culture and express it through dance.
"Born in New Zealand and growing up my mum put us in that western environment where you just spoke English, but we did understand Samoan and we were kind of kept away from the fa'a Samoa stuff, so when she passed away, I really wanted to learn more about the culture, so I could just feel more connected to being Samoan."
Returning to the Pacific Dance Festival is Papua New Guinea choreopgraher Julia Mage'au Gray. Her solo dance piece titled Found Words is about Pasifika people learning about their history.
"How a lot of our knowledge is written and recorded in Palagi systems and so what we find now after colonisation and outside influences in our cultures is a lot of that stuff has been taken away and so basically it's about how we look for that knowledge and when we find it, what we do with it, how we keep it in contact, I suppose, and make old, new old."
Ms Gray says it also draws on traditional PNG dance.
"I'm traditionally trained and Papua New Guinea has over 800 living languages, just to give you an idea of how diverse we are and out of the... I think over 20 provinces, we [Sunameke production] have learnt dances from 8 of those provinces. What you'll see is not traditional dance. We draw from our traditional movement and what you'll see is contemporary old movement."
Ms Gray says it's been difficult working alone.
"It's a solo work and that in itself is challenging because as Pasifika people we do things as a 'we' not as individuals. It's a true challenge to actually go ahead and do solo work and not feel like, yeah I'm completely alone."
The show Wahine Toa at the Mangere Arts Centre will also feature work from Tepaeru-Ariki Lulu French and Losalia Milika Pusiaki.