MANCHESTER – Dancers, drummers and a hostess all helped transform the meeting room of the township library into a tropical paradise.
Members of the Berlin, New Jersey based Paradise Island Entertainment provided a luau show to several Ocean County Library (OCL) branches during Asian Pacific Month. They shared some tropical island culture at the Manchester Library drawing a packed audience.
The entertainers included hostess Marie DiLeonardo, drummer Sefo Valinote and dancers Jecamille Maniwang, Sydney Maniwang, Carleigh Bernardo and Laureanna Holgado.
DiLeonardo provided some commentary about the various island cultures as she introduced the dancers following costume changes.
She also shared the interesting love story that brought the entertainers together. “It all started with Sefo’s family. His uncle moved to Hawaii and he was the main fire knife dance dancer in the show there. One night at the show when they brought all the ladies up from the audience just as we do here, sparks flew between one of the ladies and him, literally, and she was from the beautiful tropical island of Deptford, New Jersey.”
Two Paradise Island Entertainment dancers perform at the Manchester Township Library. (Photo by Bob Vosseller)
That remark brought laughter from the audience. “They fell in love and they wrote letters back and forth for about six months and he then followed her here to New Jersey. Sure enough they brought the whole family over slowly and they all ended up having babies and starting their new show. One of the babies is here dancing with us.”
“We’ve been doing this for a long time. We were in diapers dancing together and singing and we are very excited to continue the tradition here for all of you today,” she added.
DiLeonardo said “all the music you hear today and the singing is Sefo who is playing the guitar and bass and drums on all of the tracks.”
She noted some common Hawaiian words such as hula and aloha. Aloha is the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy. It is commonly used as a greeting but also has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians, for whom the term is used to define a force that holds together existence.
The word is also found in all Polynesian languages and always with the same basic meaning of love, compassion, sympathy, and kindness. Its use in Hawaii has a seriousness lacking in the Tahitian and Samoan meanings. It is believed that the first expression of aloha was between a parent and child.
“Do we know how to say goodbye? Love? Aloha doesn’t necessarily mean hello or goodbye. It means love and it means spirit and family and all-encompassing things,” the hostess added.
Along with Hawaii and Tahiti the dancers performed some favorites from New Zealand which consists of more than 600 islands, most of which are remnants of a larger land mass that now lies beneath the ocean. New Zealand is the sixth-largest island country, and the third-largest located entirely in the southern hemisphere.
“Does anyone know the island name for New Zealand?” DiLeonardo asked the audience. “The long one is Aotearoa. In New Zealand they do a dance with the poi ball which is a braided string with a pom pom at the end and a ball.”
A dancer from Paradise Island Entertainment performs a tropical wedding dance during a performance held at the Manchester Library. (Photo by Bob Vosseller)
The poi ball dance is a traditional dance form that originated in New Zealand. It is a rhythmic dance that involves the use of poi, which are balls attached to strings. The dancers skillfully manipulate the poi in a variety of ways, creating mesmerizing patterns and rhythms. DiLeonardo noted, “poi balls used to be filled with something heavy like rocks but today we fill them with tissue paper. Although we won’t do this today, we do light them on fire when we perform outside.”
Valinote’s drumming skills are often put to the test. His wife remarked, “we are going to start nice and slow and we want the audience to go with the beat of the drum with a clap and the faster you clap the faster Sefo will beat the drum.
DiLeonardo asked audience members if they had ever been to Hawaii and the other tropical spots brought up during the program. She also called upon women and later men to don some grass skirts and follow along some basic dance moves.
Some audience members even got the chance to drum along with Sefo with some drums on loan.
“We get to go to the islands quite often. We have a pretty large group. We have 25 dancers total. We’ve gone to Tahiti as well,” she added.
The group will return to Manchester as part of the Township Recreation Department’s summer concert series annual Hawaiian Luau show. To learn more about the group’s activities, visit their website at paradisehula.com. Their Instagram is: @paradiseluaushow.
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