Editor,

I had the privilege of watching on YouTube the Princess Regent's and Tuita's little grand-daughter 'Anaseini Fusitu'a perform a Tongan dance at a Tongan gathering in Australia which was presided over by King George Tupou V. The performance was absolutely outstanding - the movement of her hands, her head and feet, the sound of her little hands clapping and the little smiles she gave from time to time was so charming and shows that she is a natural talented performer. At the end of her performance, she climbed up to the Royal Box and held her little face up whilst the King bent down and kissed her little cheek. Absolutely wonderful - a credit to her mother Hon Lupepau'u, her helpers, but most of all, credit to 'Anaseini for remembering all her moves in time with the music.

If you watch the video, you'll probably appreciate what I am going to talk about now. The scene is like this: this tiny little girl in front of everyone is performing a dance that she had to learn for possibly months. The music is played in the background by a group of Tongan men and women who possibly practiced this performance for months as well. But then all of a sudden, the Tongan emotions which are known only to Tongans as "loto manafana" took over and hey presto . . . chaos struck. I tried hard to focus on this tiny little girl doing a little jump, and then smile ahhhhhh. Unfortunately the distraction from the background was unbearable: Tongan men and women dragged in a set of Tongan mats and tapas whilst making noises which resembled something out of a Wild Life programme. A male was crawling around collecting the fakapale money which had by now been blown all over the place by the wind. He occasionally blocked the view of the little dancer. More Tongans arrived waving their fakapale which consisted of some clothes materials and Tongan mats. Some people insisted on going right up to the tiny little girl and trying to make their money stick to her skin by slapping it on her arms ouch!!!

I know most Tongans reading this would probably like to tell me to shut up and go away, possibly drop dead - for 'We are Tongans and we always behave like that'. But in order to improve ourselves, we need to question what we do and why we do it. Is it necessary to bring all these things to the arena and disrupt the hard work this little girl put in to her performance. Couldn't these people do a separate presentation after the little girl's performance? Do they really need to drag all these things and dump them behind the performer? What about making collection boxes, putting them in set places where people can go and put their fakapale without disrupting the performance. Dancing is an art and 'Anaseini was telling us a story with her hands and body movement. Did any of these people who jumped around know what the story was all about? But the worst thing about doing all this fakapale and making noises is that you actually take away the limelight from the performers. You want to say "look at me, look at me" - a form of showing off. It is disrespectful to the performers and uncaring towards the viewers.

Please, let's search for a better way and a more civilised approach on how to carry out the fakapale without hindrance or distraction. Put our dancers and performers back in the limelight and let us sit back and enjoy this Tongan ancient art-form of story telling.

'Ofa atu

Senolita Swan

senolita_swan_3 [at] msn [dot] com