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Show 80 Maori Dancers Bring Praise For Church Youth TEMPLE VIEW, N.Z. high school students of the Church College of New Zealand (CCNZ) took the population of the South Island by storm in their recent musical tour of the Eiglity-on- e major cities. The students, all Maoris, titled their production, The Coming Of The Maori, and played to over 19,000 in their tour. The production is based on many facets of ancient and contemporary Maori life in song, dance, and narration. According to Alton 1 Wade, principal of CCNZ, the main purpose of the tour was to promote the Church in the South Island ; to uplift the Maori culture program at the College, and to give students an opportunity to display what they have learned and to see the South Island as a social studies tour. The tour consisted of 81 students and 28 adults which included the three bus drivers. The students traveled on two large buses. A large truck carried stage equipment and two school vans. The tour was planned in December and officials of the New Zealand South Mission were approached. Idea was to promote the Church and give the wards and branches opportunities to raise money for tiieir budgets. The plan was for branch members to house the touring students and promote the show. All profits would then go to the participating branch. This was quite successful as each area was able to make some money for their branches," said Mr. Wade. In each area where the students played, they didnt always have Church members. Local organizations participated on the same basis. were high in their acclaim of the Maori dances, songs and war chants. The first show the youngsters put on was in the SL James Theater in Press reviews Wellington. The theater seats 1,700 and there were over 1,500 in attendance for the first performance. Mary important guests, including Mrs. Tere Katene Sullivan, a attended the member of Parliament, performance. Some of the audience, members of the Operatic Society, proposed that the youngsters be part of the New Zealand presentation in Exposition 70 in Osaka, Japan. Representatives of Air New Zealand also proposed that the group be''-- taken to weston a concert ern cities of the United . tour. Mr. Wade said there are seven basic scenes and all of them kept the audience intensely interested. They depict a great variety of dancing and similar activities. Ancient games and the traditional welcome opens the show. The migration scene unfolds and attention is drawn to the unsolved mystery of Maori origin. The people at love, work, and war brings the audience back to the present. Mr. Wade added that while the show is highly entertaining, this isnt the main purpose of the presentation. It is to awaken the people of New Zealand to the need to preserve a culture neglected by the nation generally. The aim of the tour is to expose the richness of Maori culture to the public with the hope that it might be stimulating enough to cause controversy followed by action, he said. The students gave 21 performances and travelled almost 3,000 miles, Don Larson, tour manager, said the students represented the Church and school to the highest degree and said the tour was highly successful. Without preaching a sermon, we were able to break down many barriers in the South Island. We made a lot of friends and impressed a lot of people and so we feel that we have accomplished what we set out to accomplish, Mr. Larson said. Mr. Larson described part of the tour this wy: s Drawing depicts one of many Maori dances which thrilled audiences in tour of New Zealand. The South Island of Ntw Zealand is so situated that all the large cities lie on the East Coast. The West Coast is very sparsely populated because of the mountain area where much of the area makes you feel you are in the alps of Switzerland; there are very few places to stay and yet our desire was to go up the West Coast because of die beauty of the area and to give the students the opportunity of seeing some of the outstanding mountains, glaciers and fiords that this country has to offer. When we left Invercargill, until we got up to the top of tiie South Island, most of our work would be with Our first show was in a small community, Te Anau. This is a resort town on a large lake, Te Anau. I doubt if there are 100 homes in the area and yet the town turned out and billeted our entire group. The hall that we were to perform in was a very small one. Up to this point we had performed in the large opera houses which had large stages and large seating capacities, e.g., the St. James Theatre in Wellington holds 1,700, the Majestic Theatre in Christchurch holds almost 1,500 and the Civic Theatre in Invercargill holds 1,200. When the group left Invercargill and before presenting the show in Te Anau, we travelled to the beautiful Milford Sound. These sounds have been cut out by glaciers and the sight is one which you dont very often see for the mountains rise almost 6,000 ft. They are practically straight up and down and when it rains there are thousands of waterfalls coming over these mountains. These are the most magnificent mountains I have seen and I have been raised in Utah. From Te Anau we travelled to beauti-fQueenstown. Queenstown is situ ted oa Lake Wakatipu. This is another resort town and here we rented an entire youth ramp where our group stayed that evening. There were no members in the town and went to wrk promoting the the show, finding a place for us to stay, handling all the food and finding a place for our group to perform. Again the hall was small and we had to extend the stage, as we did in Te Anau, to get the group on. As the evening progressed not just 30 people showed up, but 280 people came, many of whom had travelled as rar as 90 miles and. Incidentally, ue had a couple from Western Samoa who saw the show that evening. As it ended up, our expense in Franz Josef only amounted to very little because of this performance. ol Face pulling is an integral part of the Maori dances as shown by CCNZ students WEEK ENDING JANUARY 11, 1969 CHURCH- -5 |