Moses and the Dance Off...

Well, one of the telling factors about any society is how they party…so obviously I was curious as to what our ‘first night out in Alotau’ would hold for us. Well, I can’t say we were disappointed. First let me give some background…

Moses Tau is one of the top recording artists in Papua New Guinea. He/She performs in male and female clothes, but probably identifies more with the female side. Moses is a very talented singer and is widely admired, and won some awards at the Sydney Mardi Gras in 2006 (I think).

He/She was at Education Milne Bay (Jane’s workplace) the other day recording some film clips for his new songs. Tori and I (Jane) were sitting there chatting and watching the proceedings when Moses asked for us to be in his film clip. The song was one promoting Milne Bay – a song with a tourism undertone – and some ‘dim dims’ were needed. So we had to sit there with flowers in our hair, drinking from coconuts in our daggy work clothes and ‘follow Moses to paradise’. So the first taste of stardom in PNG was fairly hilarious, and we are hoping it will come on EMTV (PNG’s music channel)…if we can possibly tape it we will.

So Moses was hosting a karaoke/Phillipino night at Masurina (one of the local drinking holes) last Saturday night – we decided this event was too good to miss and hence arrived at our first night out in Alotau. The night was proceeding with just a little bit of cask wine and traditional dancing when the dancers were asked to pick members of the audience as partners. Now most people reading this will know that I’m not at all averse to dancing, but I wasn’t sure about this traditional dancing, and so tried not to be picked. In the way of all things, when you want to be ignored, you aren’t, and so before I knew it I was up on the dance floor, with my dance partner Bosco. Bosco was wearing a loin cloth, creatively placed plant product and gold paint.



We were all dancing away when Moses decided that we should dance in groups, and the audience would eliminate couples until the winner was decided. Not knowing much about traditional dancing I did the age old “When in doubt, just wiggle your hips”, and that seemed to work quite well. It worked well enough that Bosco and I made it to the last two couples, and while we didn’t win, we lost to one of the well known local bosses. Not being the ‘favourite’, number two didn’t seem too bad, so I thought the evening was quite successful. Even better, Cam actually got up and danced at some point too, and photos were taken as proof.



So sleepy little Alotau can really let her hair down at times (especially when there are large groups of vocal women and alcohol combined!). Now we just have to test out the other drinking holes in town.

Coming Soon: our house, our life, our Alotau…