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Thetāmūrē, ortamouré as popularized in many 1960s recordings, is a dance fromTahiti and theCook Islands. Usually danced as a group of boys and girls, all dressed inmore (the Tahitiangrass skirt, however not made of grass but of the fibers from the bark of thepūrau, "hibiscus").
The boys shake their knees (as scissors, from there the use of the wordpāʻoti (scissors) for this movement), and the girls shake their hips (and their long, loose hairs, if they have them). In reality the movement of their knees is the engine which drives their hips.[citation needed]
Their feet should stay flat on the ground and their shoulders should remain stationary. However traditionally in the Ote'a or Ura Pa'u, the hips in Tahiti are shaken round and round (in what is known as the fa'arapu) while in the Cook Islands, the hips are in a side-to-side movement. But due to the tamure, this emphasis is less important.[citation needed]
The movements of the hands is of secondary importance. The girls are largely standing still, the boys move around their partner, either facing her in front or hiding behind her back (as seen from the public). The tempo of the music is continuously increased up to the point where only the most experienced and fittest dancers can keep their shakings up. Depending on the performers, the sexual innuendo may be more or less obvious. The predecessor of the tāmūrē, the traditionalʻupaʻupa was outlawed by theLMS missionaries for that reason.Tāmūrē is a foreign word, the name of a fish in theTuamotu, the real name of the dance isʻori Tahiti (Tahitian dance).[citation needed]
Shortly after theWorld War II a soldier of the Pacific battalion, Louis Martin, wrote a song on a classic rhythm in which he used the word tāmūrē quite often as a tra-la-la. He afterward was known as Tāmūrē Martin, and a new genre was born.[citation needed]
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