The University of the South Pacific’s (USP) Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies (OCACPS) will host the Epeli Hau'ofa Memorial Dance Festival II from 21-26 March, 2016.
Artistic Director, Peter Rockford Espiritu said there will be two full days of art, music, education, culture and heritage focused on Oceania.
The festival is spearheaded by the Oceania Dance Theatre, together with Pasifika Voices, the Visual Arts Department, Pacific Studies, and the Pacific Cultural Heritage Hub.
“This year our feast of movement will focus on the very heart and soul of Oceania. Its people, their past, their present and their future! We return to our roots and invest in the multiculturalism that connects us all as Oceanians,” Mr Espiritu said.
Performance from the first Epeli Hau’ofa Memorial Dance Festival at USP’s, Laucala campus in the year 2014.
Two years ago, the premiere festival boasted guest dancers from Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and the United States of America.
There were also three USP Student Cultural Groups representing Melanesia, Micronesia, & Polynesia, including local dance groups such as VOU, Rako, Conservatorium of Music, The Shobna Channel Dancers and USP’s Oceania Dance Theatre.
OCACPS came into being in February 1997 in seemingly inauspicious circumstances with only 3 staff members. Under the leadership of its founder and Director, the late Professor Epeli Hau’ofa, the Oceania Centre has grown into the region’s leading institute for original creativity in visual and performing arts.
Professor Hau’ofa once said, “Oceania is vast, Oceania is expanding, Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us. “We are the sea, we are the ocean”.
His vision was to create A Home for the Arts – An Oceanic Space.