Fireknife Competitor in Action (Photo: Tihati Productions)
The Wailea Beach Marriott Resort & Spa is hosting the 1st Annual Maui Fireknife Competition which they may not consider a dance event but will clearly have a lot of interesting movement as you can see from the video below. Besides, fireknives are cool!
The preliminaries will be held on Friday, April 29th with the Finals the following Saturday. Competitors from Maui, Molokai and Lanai will participate and the winner will go on to compete in the 2011 World Fireknife Competition at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu in May.
Mikaele Oloa: 2010 World Fireknife Champion
As you can see from the dramatic footage of Mikaele Oloa, 2010 World Fireknife Champion, these events are quite dramatically staged and provide some of the inspiration for the growing fire dancing movement in the States.
For more on the World Fireknife Championship please see the unfortunately outdated Fireknife Championship Blog with this quite useful information section.