World’s smallest nation at Largest Festival

World’s smallest nation comes to World’s Largest Festival

The world’s smallest independent nation – Niue has sent a large chunk of its resident population to the World’s largest Maori & Pacific Island Festival – the ASB Polyfest.

An 80 strong contingent have left the country that is often referred to as the ‘Rock of Polynesia’ to come and perform at the ASB Polyfest. 52 members of the group are from Niue High School, and they will be on stage at 2:30pm this afternoon.

There have been jokes made that it could be ‘lights out’ in Niue this week, but certainly a large proportion of the country’s resident population of 1767 are at the ASB Polyfest.

The ASB Polyfest has 9000 students performing on stage, and an expected audience of 85,000, so Niue High School will certainly be performing in front of their largest crowd ever.

Watching on from the judges box will be the Hon O’love Jacobsen, a Cabinet Minister with the Niue Government, who has also come to NZ for the ASB Polyfest.

The ASB Polyfest is set for its busiest today, with song, dance and kapa haka taking place on all five stages – Maori, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoan and Tongan.

The theme of this year’s festival is “Many Cultures – One World”. This is certainly evident on many of the stages as students expertly perform dances not from their native culture. Kaitaia High School is performing a Niue cultural dance at 2pm today, yet their group is almost exclusively made up of Maori students.

11 cultural groups will be on the Pacific Corned Beef Samoan Stage today, with special interest at 12:40pm, to see if Avondale College can continue their remarkable run of seven consecutive titles in the co-ed school competition.

Another school building a remarking run on success on the Cook Islands Stage is Sir Edmund Hilary College, who are performing at 2:40pm, and looking for their fourth consecutive win.

The ACC Tongan Stage will be alive with the traditional dances of Tongan such as the Hiko, Lakalaka, Tau’olunga, Tautakaniua.

The Hapai Te Hauora Maori Stage will host the Division One competition. The traditional students strong-holds of kapa haka such as Hato Petera College, James Cook High School, Auckland Girls Grammar Kahurangi will be battling it out for the coveted Division One crown.

The ASB Village will also be full of action today, with the country’s top group at the moment – Smashproof signing autographs at 11:30am and performing at 12noon. Smashproof’s single ‘Brother’ spent several weeks at # 1 on the New Zealand charts, and the groups new album is due out on Monday, 23 March.

Today, marks the final day of the 2009 ASB Polyfest, with 85,000 spectators anticipated to have watched the colour and culture at the festival by the time it closes at 6pm this evening.

You can collect a media pass for the ASB Polyfest from the Media Office which is located near Gate 2 at the Boundary Road entrance to the festival.

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