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New Zealand rugby teams have been performing the haka before matches for 135 years. The All Blacks will do it at the upcoming Rugby World Cup in France. It was adopted from New Zealand's indigenous Maori, who used the social custom for welcomes, big occasions, and funerals. The haka was done overseas initially as an expression of New Zealand's culture and to entertain crowds. But a decline in effort and purpose made it irrelevant as a challenge. A renaissance by Maori of their culture from the 1970s led to Maori in the All Blacks restoring the haka's prestige in the mid-1980s. As the All Blacks began to take it, though, so did opponents. The confrontations have caused some of rugby's greatest theater.
