ABOUT MANEA PACIFICA

Manea Pacifica was established in 2012 by former National and International Cook Islands Sydney based Dance Champions Jasmine Samuel-Mata and Raven Nicholls. Both have had over 25 years of experience combined in multiple dance competitions and in the entertainment industry in the Cook Islands and Australia. Their goal on commencement was to give an interpretation of their understanding of the Cook Islands Culture from the perspective of the youth.

 

At the time Jasmine and Raven were 17/18 years of age and feared discernment from the elders of the wider Cook Islands community in Sydney as young individuals were rarely encouraged to establish dance troupes without the assistance of peers.

 

Regardless, both were determined to influence young Pacific Islanders into keeping in touch with their roots by taking a different approach with the management of their team.

 

 

Jasmine and Raven embrace "innovation" to keep the Cook Islands youth in engaged with the culture and to associate art and story telling of today, "connectivity" to ensure teachings and choreography are educational and symbolic, and also "creativity" to set trends and uniqueness in the market. Manea takes pride in providing professional quality services (a strict selection and training process of their entertainment team is implemented).

This has inspired many young individuals to join Manea Pacifica (total of over 100 past and present members) as well as the enrolment of an additional 300+ students to the Manea Ura Dance Academy Worldwide (Manea's Cook Islands School of Dance and Culture).

 

In 2018 Jasmine founded the Manea Ura Academy in association with Manea Pacifica due to a high demand of requests from parents wanting their children to learn the Cook Islands Culture instead of performing on a regular basis. In 2019 Jasmine and Raven opened Australia's first Cook Islands Dance Studio located in Granville Sydney which has homed around 80 students. To date since the temporary closure of the Dance Studio due to COVID-19 referred, Jasmine has transferred teaching online which has grown exponentially across 28 countries.

 

Manea Pacifica has built it's reputation through involvement at iconic Festivals in the Pacific Community in Sydney such as Sydney Waitangi Day Festival and Samoa Independence Day, has performed for crowds as large as 12,000 pax and has travelled intestate to the Gold Coast, Melbourne as well as New Zealand and the Cook Islands. Moreover Manea has been featured on Channel 9 and Fox Sports 4 times in total for the Australian NRL as well as having worked with artists such as Guy Sebastion and Olivia Foa'i (Lead singer of song "Tulou Tagaloa" from Disney's Moana Movie) 

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