Do you know how to dance Haere Mai?

WALT appreciate and celebrate Maori culture. Success criteria: I know I can do this when I write a recount about our Maori dance.

Maori dance

Last Friday Room 6 was split up into groups so we can perform a Maori dance. Firstly we needed to find our song on YouTube, We picked ‘Haere Mai’. Then our captain (Chaim) split us up into two small groups to practise the dance while the other focused on the lyrics. Chaim and Isaac later joined us for the dance and we didn’t notice that we were the loudest group because we were so engaged, So we lowered our volume and moved our table further back.

Miss Chao told us that we were performing on Monday. After morning tea, we went back to class and had one more practise so we can make sure that it’s our best performance. When we were almost finished with our practise, I felt really sad, almost like I was the new kid in the class. Then we learned the lyrics and we practised until lunch time. We had to make sure that we remembered the song.

   After that we waited for our turn and the first group’s song was ‘A Haka Mana’. We were third to perform and I FREAKED OUT! We got into our position like a pyramid. We danced to the song and our song was ‘Haere Mai’, it was like we were performing on T.V. When we were done, we sat down and everyone clapped for us. We felt proud of our group because we all did our best. The next morning Miss Chao announced the winners and it was our group. We were really happy because we won.

Lyrics
Haere mai, Haere mai, Haere mai, Haere mai    
E nga iwi e
Haere mai Ki runga o te marae
Hui mai 2x tatou2x katoa2x
E hine ma2x E tama ma 2x
Hapania o te Maori e Ia he he
Enga e iwi e Haere mai Haere mai haeare  mai ( repeat)