The Mana Show Review
On Friday the 10th, Bernard MangakaHia came to karoro school for a dance show and to tell us about his culture
and his history. What he did was showed us some dances around the world. What I think he did the show for is to
show that you can do what you want if you believe in yourself.
What Bernard first did was talk to us about Polynesia. Bernard turned on some music and sang a song about a
Indian chief telling his son to believe and climb his way up to his goal. As he was singing that song he did the
song in sign language as well. Once he finished he said to us that the culture Indian had a lot of dances and he
showed us the hula hoop one. He said that it took him 10 years to the dance with seven of the hula hoops. Now
he is up to 20 hoops and some of the American-Indians can do up to 30-40. The things that he made with the
hoops was Butterfly, Eagle, Cactus, Snake and a Flower. Then he asked someone from the audience to come up
and try the hula hoops out.
After that, Bernards Dad is from New Zealand so he showed us the Haka but he sang Humpty Dumpty.
After the haka he said that mostly everyday when he was yougner he watches his mum to the poi and he self
taught himself to do the poi by watching his mum do the poi. What the maori have on their faces are moko.
Moko are a type of tattoo that tell stories. The woman have tattoos on their bottom lip and their chin.
The male have the tattoos on one side of their head and their chin. Bernard showed us the example of
the tattoos on his face with a pencil.
After all of that, Bernard told us about his family and history. He told us that his Father is from New Zealand
and his mother is from Africa. Bernard said that he has 3 sons and that they were born in Australia Melbourne.
The oldest is a Ballerina for the Australian Ballet Company. He audition For two Companies but he made it into
both, he chose They Australian Company. The second child is a basketball player and when he was younger he
wished to go to New York and now that he is older, he is now in New York. The third Child was a hip hop person.
Bernard said that he came up to him and said that he wanted to do hip hop down in the streets of Melbourne, that’s
what he did. He went down with his youngest son and he started doing hip hop. By the end of the day he said that
His son made up to 100 dollars that day, then Bernard said that he wanted to do this every Friday and Saturday.
By the end of the year he made up to 7,000 dollars! He did a hip hop dance that his children told him to do and
what he should wear, he wore a funky looking hat, hawaiian T-shirt and baggy shorts. He did hip hop while
telling a story with his actions.
