LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
They used to be a bumper sticker that read, it takes leather balls to play rugby. The idea was that the game exemplified the most macho he-man sport known to, well, men. But this year's Rugby World Cup Competition now underway near Paris has a somewhat more elegant style. Don't get me wrong. The action has been plenty rough and tumble but Frank Browning reports that the world cup and the surrounding hoopla also showed that rugby is not just about manly men. It's about music, dance, art, and the intersection of cultures.
FRANK BROWNING: Nobody in Polyglott, St. Denis could miss the rehearsals echoing through the streets over the last few weeks.
(Sound of music)
BROWNING: More than 1,000 amateur dancers, singers, and musicians spent six months preparing for the so-called melee of cultures. In St. Denis you'll find every purest of French aristocrat's nightmare. Tahitians, Vian(ph), Algerians, Malians, West Indian Islanders, Portuguese, Slavs, as well as Breton-nationalists; all the outsiders, France either conquered, sequestered, colonized, or imported to tend the unpleasant work of building Le Choix de la France(ph). Many of them are now under threat of deportation by anti-immigrant forces in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, few could afford the tickets to the World Cup. These are the people who interested master choreographer Philippe Decoufle.
Mr. PHILIPPE DECOUFLE, (Choreographer, World Cup Opening): A 80,000 people come every night to see a rugby. Just a few of them go out to the city, which is a fantastic city, and it is really the idea of this parade is to create a bridge between the stadium and the city.
BROWNING: So, the city's mayor commissioned Decoufle, who designed the opening spectacle at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, to create an event. Ninety different ethnic and community groups began working in January to put the carnivalesque show together. More than a bridge to the daily World Cup competition, it was meant to show all the worlds that are touched by rugby: south seas drummers and singersβ¦
(Soundbite of music)
BROWNING: To the Celtic pipes of the St. Denis Breton(ph) Association.
(Soundbite of music)
BROWNING: There were also nine youngish fellows waiving white feather pompoms.
Mr. DECOUFLE: This is the pompom boys because we have a rugby team which is the only girls, so we decided to do a pompom boy band.
(Soundbite of Laughter)
BROWNING: So you are the pompom boys?
Unidentified Man: Yes, we are. We are nine.
BROWNING: No pompom girls?
Unidentified Man: No, boys. Boys, only boys.
BROWNING: But the craze over rugby isn't only in St. Denis. Across town, the high-toned ethnographic Quai Branly Museum has given over the entire month to the culture of rugby and brought in New Zealand artist Greg Semu. He says rugby is a game he loves and also one that captures the history of European colonization, especially by the British.
Mr. GREG SEMU, (Artist, New Zealand): What I'm saying is that the game of rugby comes from the colonizers and all the best players in the world are the colonized (unintelligible) and in (unintelligible). For me, the World Cup Rugby is basically all the colonized countries in islands and civilizations of the world put together to battle it out in one big battle, and may the best team win, you know. So in a way, it's celebrating the colonizers again, you know.
BROWNING: New Zealand's famed All Blacks, after their jerseys, donated a huge, all surreal photograph of themselves against a jungle background. So, Greg Semu took another iconic image: Napoleon crossing the Alps on a black stead, then he altered all of the faces to look like indigenous New Zealand Maoris in the uniforms of the conquerors.
Mr. SEMU: When you look at the colonials that are fighting the Maori are actually Maoris. And everybody has facial moko. Mokos - ta moko is the word given to tattooing for the Maori people. And when you look at this work, it's actually brother against brother - divide and rule which is the golden lore of colonialism. English, anyway, is how they conquered all of their primates, turned them against themselves and let them battle it out, and then they'll just pick up and sweep up the mess.
BROWNING: Rugby, unlike other major sports, tends to bleed over to generating broad social festivals, parties, celebrations, says Stephane Martin, president of the Quai Branly Museum.
Mr. STEPHANE MARTIN, (President, Quai Branly Museum): For a very long time, the rugby culture has included a lot of casual elements from the country, which are part of the competition. It used to be Celts, it used to be also the culture of the south of France, south of Europe. And since, what, about 10 years, it turned very Polynesian. And it's very interesting to see that now - and all the radios were talking about the game. Every day you listen to people talking about Haka, about moko. It's like it would be something very natural, very normal.
(Soundbite of Chanting)
BROWNING: Indeed, the Haka Warden(ph), a famous anthem for New Zealand rugby players was also the centerpiece for the carnival at St. Denis as giant Polynesian men painted like warriors chanted, slapped their thigh, stuck out their tongues, and set their fellow performers wild, pom-pom boys included.
(Sound of cheering)
It was a party and it was a kind of old-time street demonstration complete with placards against immigrant deportations and police abuse that would make St. Denis graying progresses proud.
(Sound of singing)
BROWNING: For NPR News, I'm Frank Browning in Paris. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
