OPENING CEREMONY: Elena wows the audience at the 2010 World Expo. (Photo: supplied)

JUST weeks after performing at the launch of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Wellington violinist Elena is back in China to support a group of businesspeople on a networking tour.

Elena and the four-member kapa haka group Tumeke are the cultural side of a Wellington business delegation, led by Mayor Kerry Prendergast, which left at the weekend.

ONE-WOMAN ORCHESTRA: Maori violinist Elena is taking music in a new direction.

New Zealand’s first classically trained Maori violinist, Elena says she feels honoured the Wellington council has confidence in her and her work.

Described by Ms Prendergast as a “cultural icon”, Elena, with the group, will be helping businesses build relationships with their Chinese counterparts at the expo and at Sister Cities Conferences in Beijing and Xiamen.

The ensemble worked closely on their expo show with choreographer Tanemahuta Gray, Maori and contemporary tutor at the Wellington Performing Arts Centre at Whitireia Community Polytechnic.

They’ve now updated the performance for the business trip.

Elena says the show condenses the classical orchestra into one instrumentalist and brings kapa haka from 40 to 50 group members to just four, but proves as powerful and spectacular as both. It’s a cutting-edge concept, she says.

She has had “amazing” support from costume designers Native Sisters and Rotorua-based weaver Karl Leonard.

Elena will launch her first CD at the expo’s New Zealand Pavilion on June 10.

No stranger to China, she performed there in 1975 as part of the New Zealand Youth Orchestra and in 2006 representing New Zealand at the Shanghai Festival of Arts.

The former Scots College music teacher says growing up as a Maori in a Pakeha world playing the violin was made difficult with criticism for doing the “white man’s thing”.

“I’m just a person playing in an orchestra,” she says.

“It takes a special type of person to spend so much time practising on their own instead of going to the movies with mates – it does make us different from other people.”

She says she has been criticised for westernising Maori chants but says European melodies have been overlaying Maori chants for the last 100 years, helping make them accessible. “I’m just taking it in another direction.”