Summary“My experience whilst doing the Fale-ship residency was one filled with love. The freedom to research whenever I could and from the comfort of my own fale was something I really valued. It also grounded me because it allowed discipline to form as I had to make time for research alongside work, family and just life.”
Sefa Tunupopo (he/they) is an artist of Samoan descent (Vaiala, Puipa'a) who centers movement and connection and is currently based in Wainuiomata, Aotearoa. Sefa has a deep love for and is training in street styles, specifically hip hop freestyle and krump. Sefa is a recent graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance (2021). Sefa's conviction in dance is synonymous with love and aspires to be able to fully express his inner self and to create safe spaces where indigenous and BIPOC perspectives and people are at the centre.
Creative Process
For Sefa’s Fale-ship, he researched how through movement one can access the ancestral knowledge that lies within us. Taking a research-based approach during his creative process helped him to unlock a deeper understanding of this practice and harness the intergenerational teachings and knowledge related to dance, movement and performance in Samoan culture.
"My creative process for my Fale-ship was very much focused on research and finding ways to open the gates that will allow me to use this research as part of my personal practice. I started by digging deeper into the connections that already existed within my dance and the dance my ancestors held.”
Sefa explores the siva in his Fale-ship, pre-colonial Samoa, siva was (and still is) a core aspect of the culture. It was used as ritual to pass on knowledge and to maintain identity, to connect and deepen relationships, for war, for entertainment and for a lot more. It was vital to the way they lived. A big part of his research was spent carving out time in everyday to connect with his dance, spending time to intentionally lab and practice what interests him and then debrief with himself, self reflecting on his experiences. Through incorporating this into his process, Sefa realised that the act of dancing and intentionally labbing and training opened the door to navigate the va, the space that relates everything and holds the ancestral knowledge.
“As a child of diaspora and spending most of my life away from Samoa, I sometimes find that I feel disconnected to my culture and ancestors. That by not being there, there is a massive gap in knowledge and understanding of Fa’asamoa and therefore a lesser connection to those who came before me. However, through constantly training and labbing my dance I have began to feel like I am accessing knowledge that my ancestors held. The same way they used siva as ritual to pass on traditions and myths, I feel that by deepening my relationship to dance and movement it helps me to tap into the ancestral knowledge that lies dormant and provide a gateway to travel home.”
“For myself the most important part of this realisation was that it wasn’t until I spent time labbing with intention and then reflecting / breaking them down afterward that I realised what was taking place within those labs. Not only was I training my dance but I was deepening my relationship with my ancestors and with my home. I think there’s a definite reason as to why I feel so much when I dance and invest in it and from my research, I think a big part of it is because when we dance, we tap into that ancestral knowledge / memory. Our bodies and souls remember how our ancestors moved and how they felt when doing it. It also makes a lot of sense that a lot of the reasons I dance are the same as my ancestors – to connect with people and deepen relationships, to maintain identity, to unpack and release and because of love.”
Final Offering
Check out Sefa’s ‘offering’ from his Fale-ship Home Residency! His final work titled ‘Fale-ship Offering’ is a montage of movements, polishing what he learnt and developed during his creative processes he shared with us earlier in the week.
“My offering for the Fale-ship is a peak into how I felt when researching. It’s split into two parts and the music was made by my brother Montell Nickel (@lowwercasekkid). The second part (which is showed first) represents reality, starting with me eating cereal on my front doorstep and then transitioning into clips of labs with a video of a Taualuga in the background, it shows me being home in both the literal and spiritual sense and then the connection of my dance and the dance of my ancestors. The first part (which is showed second) represents the va, an edited version of me dancing with words flashing followed by a shot peeking in through a window. The flashing words were all things that popped up during my research that held importance to me in navigating the va. The shot of the window represents being in the va and getting to peak into the knowledge that is there.”
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