A mix of posts on gesture, HCI, perception or robots and some personal information.
I promise this will be the last haka post for a while, but I thought it would be nice to round off the story with a final video. It shows the New Zealand basketball team, the Tall Blacks, doing a decent haka.
And so the haka spreads to other nations, and to other sports. There [...]
It appears New Zealand Maori actually introduced the haka to rugby (history), in their tour of Britain in 1888/89. Although this history story describes a somewhat vaguer origin (therefore more likely?) it also credits the ‘New Zealand Natives’ with the first overseas performance of the haka by a rugby team. Since 2001 NZ Maori performs [...]
The haka is conquering the world of battle-like sports it seems. Rugby teams from New Zealand and other pacific islands have performed war dances like the haka for a long time already. But now football teams from Hawaii and even Texas have also adopted the haka.
The first example is of Kahuku High School’s Red Raiders [...]
The New Zealand All Blacks are not the only rugby team with a challenge or warrior dance like the haka. There are for example these Pacific Islands: Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.
The Fiji national rugby union team is a strong side that delivers the cibi before test matches (more). (Image source)
Tonga (in red) versus Samoa [...]
A while ago there was upheaval about the All Blacks. They performed a new Haka called Kapa o Pango instead of the traditional Ka Mate.
An early performance of the new Kapa o Pango haka
The trouble was that it included a throat-slitting gesture. After a lot of fuss the haka was slightly changed and it all [...]
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