Transcript
It was the first time international dance group Rako Pasefika attended the festival.
They gave their Fiji Rotuma inspired performance over the weekend titled Cloaks of Protection
The group's creative director Litila Mitchell says it is important to reconnect with people's history, community and youth.
Litila Mitchell also says their choreography is a meld of different dance forms from around the region.
She says they don't shy away from tough themes like violence, and other important matters like saving the environment and preserving culture.
"It's a way for our urban international youth to connect back to the islands. Also a lot of our elders who have moved internationally. We have a huge base of elders here in Auckland and for us it is an opportunity for us to bring our young people to them and reconnect, learn stories. Because a lot of our arts and creative culture has died out, we have lost our tapa, our tattoos, a lot of our old dances have gone."
The Fiji Rotuma dance group also spent time doing fundraisers, and had South Auckland school children mesmerised during their daytime matinee show.
Sir Douglas Bader Intermediate students were willing participants in a dance workshop too.
A new contemporary show Bionica, looked at Pacific queer identities and the story is set in outer space.
It explores the stories of a group of brown LGBTQ indigenous youth set in a utopia world in the future and features a popular dance move, known as voguing.
It's the first show for director Jacob Tamata from the Coven Collective, produced in collaboration with FAFSWAG.
"I want more work to be in the public sphere that has normalised queer identities and is genuinely inclusive of the community. I am also passionate about invigorating Pacific youth and my show Bionica has a bold look at future possibilities about queer youth in particular, that is the audience I am targeting the most. I want us to start making progress for our community by telling stories that enable us to live well and prosper."
His advice for other youth from the brown queer community is to reach for the stars.
"Dream big. I for one dreamed of being a performance artist, an artist in general who speaks politics and fights for injustice and speaks in terms of helping our community out."
The festival's project leader Cilla Brown says it is a unique event that is continuing to evolve each year.
"Most of these works are actually new works and they are also developed works by Pacific artists, this is their chance to come up with their own contemporary works with a pacific flavour or some have Pacific concepts but a more contemporary platform but also have different interpretations of traditional knowledge and values from each different Pacific island."
Other popular performances included Moana, a series of short works by students from the New Zealand School of Dance, Otara's Aloali'i Tapu performed his show Goodbye Naughton and the hip hop and contemporary show, Blueprint.
