Battlefield practice lives on in annual competition

Fireknife dancers wear their wounds like a badge of honor.

A nick here, a cut there, burns on different parts of their bodies.

But it’s all in a night’s work for those who engage in a popular competition whose roots go back centuries to when Samoan warriors performed before battle with the "nifo oti," or "tooth of death."

Today it’s evolved into the World Fireknife Championship, which will be held Wednesday through Saturday at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie.

"I have yet to see any decent fireknife dancer who doesn’t have the wounds or the marks of his trades," said Alfred Grace, president and chief executive officer of the PCC. "At least all of them will suffer burns or nicks or at least cuts on hands, arms and legs from maneuvering the knife around them."

The 22nd annual event, which will be held in conjunction with the Samoan High School Cultural Festival on Saturday, is expected to attract 8,000 to 10,000 spectators and will be live-streamed on the Internet.

There are 61 participants registered in the senior and junior divisions from Hawaii, Tahiti, California, Florida, Japan and Hong Kong. The ages of the competitors range from 6 to 50.

Fireknife dancing was created in 1946 as a form of entertainment by Chief Olo Letuli of American Samoa.

"It became incorporated into Samoan entertainment although it was dangerous," said Steve Laulu, manager of the Samoa village at the PCC and a co-host of the World Fireknife Championship. "But because it was part of the entertainment, young men learned to fire-dance, and now young men, and even women and those not of Samoan ancestry, perform the dance because of the interest in it."

Centuries earlier, Samoan warriors took a knife with a hook at the end to battle with the idea to strike the enemy and hook him. One of the practices of Samoan warriors was to remove the head of the fallen enemy and take it back as a prize.

Today it’s more civilized, but the element of danger is still there.

"Fireknife dancers today, when they get burned, it doesn’t stop them," Laulu said. "I think of this as a sport in itself because the element of danger is the knife because it has a hook at the end, and the fire at both ends of the knife is an added danger."

The knife, including the 25-inch dowel handle, is 37 inches long. On the opposite end is a sharp hook. A burlaplike material is wrapped around each end of the knife and affixed with tie wires; both ends of the knife are soaked with a flammable white gas.

When the performers twirl the knives, they need to make sure to catch the weapons in the middle of the dowel to avoid getting burned.

The four-day competition involves twirling one, two or sometimes three flaming fireknives to a choreographed routine.

"For the participant it’s an honor to compete against the best of the world and to be crowned the world fireknife champion," Grace said. "It is considered sort of like a pinnacle of a fireknife dancer’s career.

"For the audience it’s an opportunity to see a unique art form that has a tremendous amount of energy. You’ve got the fireknife dancer standing onstage going through routines, and there’s a huge crescendo of sound and energy coming from the drummers pounding behind them. And everybody holds their breath when they toss the knife and fluidly spin around and catch it behind their back without looking."

Judges rate the performers based on degree of difficulty of the routine and deduct points if the knife is dropped.

The competitions on Wednesday and Thursday are in the Hale Aloha luau venue on the PCC grounds, and on Friday and Saturday nights the top three finalists in the senior division will perform during intermission of the PCC’s evening show, "Ha: Breath of Life."

Also on Saturday, hundreds of Oahu high school students will demonstrate their knowledge of Samoan culture by competing in a series of traditional Samoan practices and life skills in the Pacific Theater. Those exercises will include protocol and speech making, basket weaving, coconut husking and fire making, costuming, poise, dance movements and interpretation.