In our online class we experience New Caledonia’s “pilou” dance — our very simple, conceptual version of it, anyway. Each pilou tells a particular Kanak story, whether of a birth, marriage, great battle or even the arrival of missionaries. While the term “pilou-pilou” encompasses many kinds of pre-colonial Kanak ceremonies, the pilou dance itself is a “round-dance” that traditionally involves many people moving together around a central pole, sometimes for hours at a time. New Caledonian pilou dancers’ feet make a “sh-sh-sh-sh” sound as the dancers move from foot to foot, hopping on one foot while stamping the other. Sometimes dancers hold straw which sways as the body shifts from side do side. The French colonial authorities banned pilou in the mid-20th century because they feared the trances Kanaks entered while dancing, but in class we love trances! So, we pilou.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site — the information you’re seeking may still be here, but a lot of links are broken and details may be out of date. We are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our class offerings, our “pen pal” program and how to become one of our teachers, and will eventually be moving all the goodies from here over to there. So, GO TO THE NEW SITE!
