The International Fireknife Dancing Championship in Hawaii

During the intermission at the regular evening show at the Polynesian Cultural Center, a young performer steps out, wearing a colorful loincloth (called a lavalava) and grassy leggings. In one hand, he holds a special torch, a nifo oti (tooth of death) with a lave (hook), called a fireknife; one end is lit.

We watch with breath held as he brings the flame to his lips, then touches the unlit end to his lips to light it. And then he starts spinning the fireknife, the ends blurring into a circle of fire. He tosses it up, maybe 35 feet high, then catches it and continues spinning - to each side, between his legs, in both hands or one. At one point, he lies down to hold the flaming ends of the knife on the soles of both feet.

In part II he gets a second fireknife. He spins them individually, juggles the two around his body, tosses them one at a time and together, links them together and spins them, a long stick with three flames. He does acrobatics while spinning fire around his body, holding the fireknife in the crease of his knee sometimes, every move designed to dazzle the crowd. It works.

The History of the Fireknife and Fireknife Dancing

Originally, the nifo oti was a type of wooden machete made sharp with shark's teeth or other materials. The Samoan warriors danced the Ailao with it, a type of knife dancing that involves holding the sharpened blade frequently. The nifo oti eventually developed a lave, or hook, and modern nifo oti are essentially metal machetes with the tip sawed off, turned around, and then welded back down to form the lave. The Ailao was historically performed before battle to intimidate enemies, and the lave was used to easily carry the heads of defeated foes. Samoans are a little showy!
Samoan knife dancing by itself is dazzling, and it was eventually imported to the mainland United States. In 1946, a Samoan knife dancer, Freddie Letuli, was performing in San Francisco when he saw a fire eater and a little girl who spun a flaming baton. Inspiration struck. He wrapped both ends of his nifo oti with a towel, doused them with oil loaned to him by the fire eater, and started dancing with the flaming blade. Freddie became Paramount Chief Letuli Olo Misilagi, and the official father of fireknife dancing.

Today, performers are not likely to be holding the bare blade of the nifo oti; instead, the handle of the knife has extended past the center of the blade, and the hook extends just far enough past the flame that another fireknife can be attached. That makes it a little bit safer. Just a little.

The Annual Fireknife Dancing Championships

For the last fifteen years, the World Fireknife Dance Championship has been held at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu, Hawaii. The finals are riveting, with the three best performers displaying their skills twice, once with a single nifo oti and once with two. Things do catch on fire, and performers will get burned; at least three times, I saw grass leggings spark and smoke when the flames got too close.

This year's winner, Andrew "Umi" Sexton, lives in Orlando, Florida, but is originally from Waianae, Oahu, Hawaii. He currently is a professional fireknife dancer for Disneyworld, and has been dancing since he was three years old. It was easy to tell he works for Disney, by the way; his two competitors, while very talented, kept their moves a little circumscribed, treating them as an athletic exercise. Sexton, on the other hand, was a brilliant showman, keeping the crowd on the edges of their seats despite dropping the knife a couple of times.

This win continues a domination of the competition by Orlando, who have won most of the championship slots for the last three years.