Margaret Kilauano Aipoalani

Margaret Kilauano ʻAipōalani
Margaret ʻAipōalani is an employee of Kekaha Elementary School and has taught hula on Kauaʻi for over twenty years.


The one thing that my mother did for me was to teach the hula without any kapu. I think she knew my generation couldn't handle it and she didnʻt want me getting hurt. She realized that the hula kapu was of her time and she wanted to put it away.

Kalalau was the original village where the Hawaiians first started out from. Some Hawaiians went out to Haena. Others came out of the village and ended up on this side of the island. I was born in Kekaha and became interested in the hula when I was a young girl at age eight. I received ʻōlapa training as well as ʻauwana. Kahiko is a new word for what I was taught to be ʻōlapa. I was trained by my mother Kawehiwa Kaholoiki who was taught by her father. Tūtū Kaholoiki was a hula instructor in Kalalau where the hula is believed to originate from. The people of this village were the source of much of our Hawaiian culture.

When I was young I was not really interested in what my mother was passing down to me. She would concentrate on the paʻi and the oli of the mele, and then she would rise and dance as another woman would paʻi. Afterwards she would explain the manaʻo of the chant through stories that had been passed down to her through her father.

Because of the rituals I did not ʻūniki, but I was asked by some high school kids to help them and that's how I began to teach. I try to teach my students that hula ʻōlapa is a tremendously strict form. The movement of your feet and body are within strict boundaries, and everything is dictated by the paʻi of the mele.

To me ʻōlapa is the chants and dance motions handed down from generation to generation. I can't revise or modernize my definition. I'm set with it and I have to stay the way I am. The ʻōlapa of today is a beautiful, theatrical show and it's fantastic what's going on but I wouldn't like to see the ʻōlapa of the future.