Currently a (lance teacher at ‘Iolani School, Edward William Collier, Jr. has been teaching hula for over thirty years and is the kumu hula of Hdlau 0 Nd Pua Kukui located in Kalihi. When I first started to teach hula, my halau was known as Ed Collier's Dancers. As time went on however we wanted to use the word “halau in our name. One day the name Hdlau 0 Nd Pua Kukui came to me. I was dancing with Kawai Cockett and the Lei Kukui Dancers in the late Sixties and early Seventies. So l asked Kawai if it was alright to use this name. I used the word “pua” instead of “lei” because as the “pua,” we re still growing and learning about hula. Also the kukui is symbolic and the Hawaiians used it for their food, medicine, dyes, and mainly for light. I felt this was an appropriate name for my halau. I first learned hula when I was about twenty-years-old. Instead of being a dancer first then studying to become a teacher, it was the complete opposite with me. I was a teacher first. While involved with the St. John’s Church in Kalihi, I got kids who didn’t have anything to do and who had studied under different hula teachers to share with all of us. Because these kids loved to perform, we did shows at hospitals, old folks homes, and service clubs. My first students were also my teachers. They showed me the basic steps. I just had a love for the hula. Although 1 didn’t know how to dance, I was able to choreograph by watching my kids. But 1 wanted to learn ancient hula. I wasn’t trained formally and I didn’t really understand it. I used to watch somebody dance and copy it, thinking it was alright. I later found out what I was doing was wrong. The person I consider my first and only teacher is Henry Pa. He was teaching at the Magic Hula Studio where he and Aunty Bose Joshua shared (lie studio. 1 stayed with him for about four years. Uncle Henry Pa set me straight . He told me that hula is your own creativity. You have to create your own dance. You cannot use somebody else’s hula. Uncle Henry taught me kaliiko, ‘auana, and how to choreograph. He would sit with me and teach me the pa‘i first. He would show me the drum beats and then we would go over the words. I remember getting scoldings from him when I didn’t remember the words the following week because I had not done my homework. After that I made it a point that whenever he taught me the dance or pa i. I made sure that when I came back the following week, I knew my dance or pa‘i. 1 wanted to let this man know that I appreciated what he was doing for me. He told me to teach my students what I was learning from him. As I taught my students, it enabled me to remember the dances. Uncle Henry had a fantastic mind. The man was way ahead of his time. I le was amazing. He once presented a hula ballet that was danced to all Hawaiian music with Hawaiian movements. The only difference was that the dancers were dressed like ballet dancers. I wish 1 had more time with Uncle Henry Pa. He spoke the Hawaiian language fluently. He was able to translate and tell me what the song was actually about. He made me write and gave me handouts, the Western way of teaching hula. At times he would test me just to see if I was able to pick up from listening to him. I used to feel bad because I didn’t uriiki. But other kumu and even some of our masters did not go through that old style of Tmiki. I think that the desire to teach and share is the only thing that is important. People ask me why I don’t Tmiki anybody. I’m just waiting. Each kumu who is getting on in age will know eventually w ho they wall select to carry on their work or select to carry on their halau. When the time is right I w ill know who that person is. I’m hoping it’s my daughter but it could be somebody else too. Today I teach hula the way I was taught. 1 also choreograph my own. It depends on what I’m going to use the hula for. For a show' I would rechoreograph the dance. If it’s for a recital, then we do it the way it should be. I’ll tell my students that this is how this dance was taught to me so now I’m teaching it to you. And then there are times 1 11 tell them, “This is my creation.’ I teach them “Kawika in its very basic form because “Kawika” is a chant that starts everybody off who wants to study kahiko. This is traditional. And after awhile 1 11 come back and 1 11 say, “You know how' to do the traditional form, now I’ll teach ‘Kawika to you in my form. This is not traditional, this is my creation.” After teaching for thirty years my greatest joy is that I’m now teaching the children of my original students. I enjoy giving people the pleasure of knowing a little of their Hawai‘i through hula. 1 have learned a lot and am still learning. 1 want my students to learn through hula too. I define hula kahiko as the past. Twenty years from now we’re going to be the past and chants w ritten about things happening today will be kahiko. The true form of kahiko is the traditional works and the way the dances were passed on to you from your kumu. There are some changes from what I remembered the kahiko to be when I first danced. I enjoy the work of the young kumu hula. I see a lot of innovations in the hula and I tell myself, “that’s different.” Change is alright if it inspires the young people to continue to hula. I believe everything has to change to survive. Hula is no different.
Nā Kumu Hula Mae Ulalia Loebenstein text from Nānā I Na Loea Hula Vol One Page 94
Mae Loebenstein is the daughter of the late Ida Long of Kahului, Maui and currently works in collaboration with Alicia Smith of Halau 0 Na Maoli Pua. The hula, as I was growing up in the home of my parents Henry and Ida Long of Kahului, Maui, was a vital, living experience. Mama, born Ida Pakulani Kaaihue, studied with the hula master Kamawae of Maui. She lived in the halau and was trained in the art of kuahu and hula ‘olapa. As our first kumu hula, Mama shared the knowledge of her halau life with us. This knowledge is a living reality based on a vast experience of learning and sharing. Everyday we were taught a little bit about the dance — kaholo to get a sense of rhythm and beat or how to use the implements. We learned kahiko first and then ‘auwana. We would dance in the afternoon after all our chores were done. It was our recreation time. My mother would take us to the mountains to learn which ferns were used for dancing or to the ocean to learn which seaweed was used for healing or for eating. The most precious gift my mother gave me through hula was a sense of discipline. Discipline develops assurance and confidence. Mama taught us hula as a way to know our culture and heritage rather than for entertaining. I came to 0‘ahu to attend St. Andrews Priory, and in those days the only way to travel between islands was by ship. That’s an experience that today’s children have missed. After high school I became a musician and met Lena Guerrero. Eventually, we joined Daddy and Mama Bray who were performing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Once a week, the Brays would have a lu‘au at their home in Pu‘unui for the tourists and we would provide the entertainment. Mama Bray had an aura of mysticism about her and as our teacher in the hula, she helped to develop a natural fashion sense in hula costuming and it’s overall effect on the dance. So me of my fondest memories are of the years I spent as an entertainer at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. That was an era of elegance and gentility. It was like Cinderella going to the Grand Ball every night of the week. Everything was the finest. The guests of the hotel during that period were either celebrities or wealthy people from all over the world. When we performed, the audience was quiet and attentive. When we finished, they applauded with respect and appreciation. After performing, we would sit on the side and watch the parties on the great lawn. It was all like a wonderful dream. With the Second World War, the Army took over the hotel to house the soldiers on Rest and Recuperation leave. That was the beginning of the end. We will never see anything like the days of the old Royal Hawaiian Hotel again. When I turned thirty, I began to play music at Don the Beachcombers and hula was lost in the shuffle. Lei Collins, Sally Wood, and I were the musicians with Rosalie Stephenson as vocalist. ‘Iolani Luahine was the featured dancer. Later I entertained with Bill Lincoln at the Kahala Hiltons Maile Room for ten years. My youngest granddaughter was born on the Mainland and was raised in the Haole way. Maelia was two-and-a-half when she was sent home to live and be Hawaiian. I asked Alicia (Smith) to accept my mo‘opuna as a hula student. In 1973 Alicia asked me to help her polish a keiki show in which Maelia was a participant. That’s how our association in the halau began. I went to Henry Pa during the last two years of his life. Uncle Henry was an extraordinary man, sensitive and talented — a great artist. He was someone you sat back and observed. You did not question him too much. You had to be cautious and pick the times when best to approach him. The hula of old was a simple dance with a few basic steps. The same basic steps were used to express the hula in a distinctive style by each island and each district. That is why we should not say that one style of hula is right and another is not. There is nothing wrong with taking the same basic steps and combining them to make the dance look fresh and new. With age, wisdom comes. As we grow older we learn to value our culture. What may have seemed unimportant in our youth becomes very precious as we grow in years and experience.
OlanaAi is the daughter of hula teacher Blossom Clark Kaipo and has taught hula on 0‘ahu for the last eight years. It’s very exciting to be living during an era of renaissance in Hawai‘i. A time not only of rebirth for the old arts and culture but also a time of new growth and development in these areas. Finally the Hawaiians are dancing for themselves. Not just for the gods, not just for the ali‘i, not just for the tourists but finally for themselves. My mother Blossom Clark Kaipo is my kumu and she is the source, the teacher, and the inspiration for all that evolves in our halau. When I was growing up, our home was a stopover place for strangers as long as I can remember. Strangers were welcome and they would return again and again. My mother taught hula so there were hula skirts on the walls, and music and the implements surrounded us. She never prodded my sister and I to dance but once we showed the interest she began to train us. I began with my mother at age three and I continue to study under her today. I was taught the chants, traditional Hawaiian mele, and hapa Haole songs but there was no definite division between kahiko and ‘auana back then. In class my mother taught the basic steps the way she had been taught by her mother. Our knees were bent, our steps were precise, and our shoulders were steady; and this helped to make the swaying of our hips more natural-looking. I did not go on to another teacher after my mother because I felt it would be disloyal. In 1975 my daughter Natalie Noelani was in kindergarten and I wanted her to learn the hula style of my family, so I gathered together a few girls who were interested and I began to teach. I’ve never thought of myself as a kumu hula but a hula teacher. I’ve gone very, very slowly and I’ve kept my goals small because I wanted to fit my family into my life. Today we are all involved. My husband Howard Ai is the halau musician, advisor, and artistic designer; and my children participate in the halau as technicians and teaching assistants. My mother always translated Hawaiian songs and meles as she taught. I try to give as much history and insight to the poetry of the language as I possibly can because today the student appreciates it much more. I’ve tried to train my girls to tell the audience what the song is all about by feeling what the writer had in mind and to portray Hawai‘i in a dignified manner. I grew up in a time when everything Hawaiian was discouraged, and I’m grateful for my freedom today to grow as an individual. I respect the old ways and I’m thankful for the old kumu that are practicing the old ways. The kahiko goes back to the very basis of fundamentals and simplicity but that simply is not in my nature. I cannot help but be what I am. The hula competitions of today have created a new style but they have also motivated people to work hard and work together. I think you have to let the kumu of today alone in terms of creativity in the kahiko. Everyone will end up doing what is right for them anyway. You have to let the judges and the audience either accept or reject a style on their own. My mother had a great influence on me because she was in my opinion the very essence of hula. She was always giving and gracious, and that’s what the hula is all about. Whenever I hear the word maka onaona in songs I think of my mother because to me she had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. She had to raise a large family and she had a hard life but the hula lifted her above everyday life away from the worries and frustrations.
Nā Kumu Hula Lilinoe Lindsey text from Nānā I Na Loea Hula Vol Two Page 66
Lilinoe Lindsey is the niece of kumu hula Joan Lindsey and currently teaches hula at the Manana Elementary School in Pearl City, 0‘ahu. It was an unspoken law in our family that all the girls went to dance for Aunty. Our families realized the opportunity there was for us by learning hula and hopefully, teaching. So at parties and functions all of the cousins knew how to dance. Aunty Joan Lindsey has been my kumu hula from the age of five- years-old. 1 have been with her all these years and we continue to have a close relationship. We actually teach at the same school with our classes running simultaneously. She is my mentor and we are an ‘ohana- type of halau. Aunty Joan taught me to dance hula at my grandfather’s home where we both lived. Her classes were made up of aunties, cousins, neighbors, and friends. 1 went with her when she started to teach at ka Makua Mau Loa Church in Kalihi and at St. Elizabeth Church in Pearl City. She taught there until I was about twelve-years-old. Then I helped her teach when she opened a halau in ‘Aiea and in Moanalua Shopping Center. So as I grew up, I was always with Aunty Joan. Since she didn’t have children until a few years later, I was pretty much considered her daughter. I was twenty-one when we had an ‘uniki at the Neal Blaisdell Center. We all had to do our kahiko and our "a liana as part of the ‘uniki ritual. Each class had to make their skirts differently and all who ‘uniki were required to have taken hula for at least ten years. As a teenager growing up in the Sixties, every weekend was spent dancing. We would dance on Friday nights, and on Saturdays after hula classes do three shows in the evenings. We went from one church to the next, from one side of the island to the other side. We danced in Waikiki at the Halekulani, Princess Ka'iulani, and Moana Hotels. We did “Hawai‘i Calls” and performed at the International Market Place. This went on for about seven years. You never realize how much you have learned and gained from being a hula dancer until after growing up. I have Aunty’s style of hula which is a basic style with flat- foot and very simple. We are very smooth and graceful and we tend to spend a lot of time developing the dancer’s gracefulness and smooth transition from one motion to the next. It is similar to tai chi where your movement is a flowing style that never stops and one motion leads into the next without much distinction. The kaholo vamp step requires that the heel of the foot be turned forward on the fourth beat. Thus forming a ninety degree angle with the toe of one foot almost meeting the heel of the other foot. The ‘uwehe step is done with a quick forward thrust of the knees and not to the sides. These are a few slight differences in Aunty’s style and execution compared to other kumu. I enjoy kahiko more than I do ‘auana. I always enjoy the rhythm, the tempo, and the sound of the ipu and the pahu. It brings me into the center of hula. I am learning the culture while dancing kahiko. For some reason just the movement itself gives me the feeling of what our culture is all about. The name of my halau is Hālau Ka Pā Nani 'O Lilinoe. The name was given to me by Aunty Joan. Poetically it means, “the beautiful sounds of the rain.” Lilinoe is the fine misty rain and pa stands for the sound. I think it’s important to relate to each child individually rather than just treating them as a mass group. I want each child to know that they are very important to me and their development is important to me. I try to do my very best to help them and I always pray that I will be able to recognize their needs. Aunty has been a great influence in my life. As I grew up, she advised me on what was best for me. I took her suggestions under deep consideration and made my decisions based on what she felt would help me throughout my life. We still go everywhere together. We do shows together and we pretty much help each other out. She influenced me to the point that I knew that hula would always be a big part of my life. And it has.
George Lanakilakekiahiali'i Na'ope
George Lanakilakekiahiali'i Na'ope text from Nānā I Na Loea Hula Vol One Page 112
George Lanakilakekiahiali'i Na'ope In 1973 George Na'ope co-founded the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival that is held annually in Hilo. Born in Kalihi, 0‘ahu, Mr. Na‘ope was raised in Hilo, Hawaii. In the old days, everyone was afraid of knowledge being stolen so the old masters would die without sharing it. The different races that live here are part of the future of the culture. I teach Haole, Japanese, Pake, and I used to get scoldings because of it. I want to share because if we don’t share these dances they are going to die. My students are all different races but when they dance I know they’re Hawaiian. My first kumu was a woman who lived next door to my family in Hilo. She was Edith Kanaka‘ole’s mother. Her name was Mama Fujii. She was married to a Japanese man. She was a short lady, even shorter than me but she was a master of the hula. I studied under Mama Fujii for five years and I will always remember her. I started with Mama Fujii when I was four-years-old. I’ll always consider her my kumu because she did the hard work. She was the one that gave me my foundation and my basics. The teacher that laid the foundation should be the teacher you give the greatest credit to. That’s the hardest thing to teach. Mama Fujii, first of all, was very strict. She and my great-grandmother were dear friends and that’s the reason I went to hula. My greatgrandmother told me that our kupunas were kumu pa‘as so she felt someone else in the family had better learn the hula. So it really wasn’t a matter of me having a choice about learning or not learning. I was forced into the hula so the more I was taught the more I didn’t like it. It wasn’t until later that I realized how great a teacher Mama Fujii was. She spoke the language fluently and she had a deep-down, root feeling for the hula. Mama Fujii taught me only kahiko but since she was a Christian she only talked about the kapus during my training. She would also teach us sitting dances and the oli but there would be no kuahu. There would only be Christian prayers before and after we danced. At the age of ten, I went on to Joseph ‘Ilala‘ole who I stayed with for ten years until he left for Honolulu to become a policeman. He taught me the kapu dances and unlike Mama Fujii the training was like the olden days. You had to chant a password to enter the halau and if it was correct, he would answer your chant and let you in. After graduating from high school, I studied under Aunty Anna Hall who taught me chanting and Aunty Jennie Wilson who taught me ‘auwana. Aunty Jennie had a very sedate way of moving her hands. She taught me that the hands tell the story so nothing can be kuikau. Every hand movement had to be a definite motion. My family was poor so I began to teach when I was thirteen- years-old. This Japanese lady named Mrs. Tsubaki was retiring from the barbershop business in Hilo so she took out all the chairs and let me use her shop to teach. I charged fifty cents a week and with that money I was able to get through school. I think we need a separate festival of contemporary kahiko because I think within its own limits it’s great. Then we can have the great young kumu of this time create the chants and dances that reflect their era. I’ve seen tremendous changes in Hawai‘i since the Forties but of my generation there is not one chant that talks about the coming of the airplane, the war, or statehood. I have tried to teach the hula as a classical traditional dance but others are teaching it as a modern, creative dance and are still calling it a traditional dance. Today we are seeing modern-day versions of what people think went on in ancient Hawai‘i. You have kids coming out who are confused and are calling personally-created motions, kahiko motions.
Robert Uluwehionapuāikawēkiuokalani Cazimero
Robert Uluwehionapuāikawēkiuokalani Cazimero, widely regarded as a major influence in the rebirth of male hula in the 1970s, is kumu hula for Halau Na Kamalei. In terms of the hula I feel I have shaken this state up. I have opened their eyes, I have kicked them in the pants but you know what? I didn’t even know I was doing it. I was from a time in the Sixties where being Hawaiian was not important. It was more important to be American. You were trying to get through school so that you could work in Hawai‘i or maybe go away to school. The idea of hula was foreign. It was an embarrassment to want to do it for all of us. Men’s dancing was a novelty and I think to a point it still is today. Men just didn’t dance. Kaha‘i Topolinski started before me and I remember watching his boys and they were fabulous. Ed Collier was another one who had a male halau years before I even began to train. It took a lot of guts for a guy to get on stage back then. There was an immediate branding of being effeminate and so it was really hard. I’m glad that things have changed a little and I suppose on the surface it looks like it’s changed a lot but it really hasn’t. Nona Beamer was my first kumu and she was my first contact with the hula. I was a sophomore at Kamehameha, guys were just beginning to dance and I was amazed. When Nona was teaching at Kamehameha there was a kapu on dancing. No one was allowed to stand up and dance and Nona changed all that. With Nona we began to stand up and actually dance. In my senior year Nona had us choose a song and interview the author. I had chosen Kui Lee and my dear friend Puna Kalama had chosen “Aloha Kaua‘i,” a song written by Ma‘iki Aiu Lake. Puna got her aunt to come to the class and I think I fell in love with her immediately. She sang for us and I accompanied her on the piano and when she left she told me to come to her if I ever wanted to learn hula. It took me quite awhile to go to her but I started my training in 1968. The class was held one night a week, every Friday and we would go in and stay for several hours. When I think about it now it was like a dream. I was so taken with her that if she told me to jump off a building, willingly, with maile leis on, I would have gone. Classes were formal in the sense that you gave the respect to the teacher and you were there on time. She would start us off with having us sit in a circle and we would talk about what we had learned and what we would be learning. I was with Ma‘iki for seven years with the last five years training as a kumu hula. There are things that I did then that I regret now. If you talk to any of my hula brothers or sisters they’ll tell you that I was a spoiled brat. I was one of the favorites, I knew it, and I played it up. I was real cocky and I suppose I still am. I graduated traditionally in 1972 and selfishly I felt at the time that I was ready to be a kumu hula. But now that I look back I didn’t possess the qualities needed. I taught informally in high school with my mother’s troupe and with the Sunday Manoa but it wasn’t until 1973 that I began to teach seriously. Ma‘iki had graduated me in 1973 as a ho‘opa‘a and ‘olapa, and in 1974 I was graduated as a kumu. There was an opening for a Hawaiian chant and dance instructor at Kamehameha and I applied for it. I taught three classes of girls which my kumu called my internship. Next was Na Kamalei which was formally founded on Kamehameha Day in 1975. My definition of hula kahiko changes every year. Right now hula kahiko is anything that was taught to me before I became a teacher. Now that I am a teacher what I teach is a modern kind of kahiko. I consider myself a contemporary kumu and I like being a teacher of today. To me hula includes the sounds of jackhammers, cranes, buildings going up, traffic. I see hula in all of these things. The kumu of the past were not any different. They loved what they had but what they had is not what we have today. The question to me is not what is kahiko but what is tasteful. Of the twenty chants I learned from Ma‘iki, the boys have only been taught one. I guess I’m selfish. I won’t teach them, it’s too precious. It’s mine yet and when I’m ready to die or give things up then I’ll be ready to share it with them. I think the hardest thing that I had to come to terms with was the gossip and innuendo that was directed at my boys. People mistook my concern and love for my students as something more and I spent a long time trying to please public opinion. When I started in the hula one thing that I had made up my mind to do was prove that men could dance. That you didn’t have to just get up on stage and stomp around with a spear while hitting a paddle against a canoe. There is such a thing as manly grace. But it antagonized people and I became such a threat that everybody thought, well if he thinks he’s going to get away with that he’s crazy. It’s ironic how the young people of today with their own innovations have made my hula legitimate. Today they are doing things I would never have thought of or permitted myself to do. Yet 1 see myself in each of them.
Patience Elmay Namakauahoaokawenaulaokalaniikiikikalaninui Wiggin Bacon Pat Bacon, born in Waimea, Kaua‘i, was adopted at birth in the hānai tradition of the Hawaiians by Mary Kawena Pūkuʻi Some of the people today would find the kahiko of my day dull because today’s kahiko is performed with much more vim and vigor. I think today’s ancient hula is aimed at the visitor because if you don’t understand the language, you won’t understand the kaona of the mele. The emphasis in the traditional hula was on the poetry of the language and you have to understand the language if you are going to appreciate the poetry. The changes in kahiko have come about because you have to keep the audience interested. I was thirteen when I studied with Keahi Luahine. Kawena’s grandmother had been a court dancer for Queen Emma so informally there were always aunties teaching us. My mother trained us in the dances handed down through the family but it was under Keahi that I began my formal training in the hula. Keahi taught us the pig dance, the hula ki‘i, the hula pahu, the kālaʻau with the papa hehi, and dances that were strictly from Kaua‘i. After a year I went on to Keahi’s cousin Kapua, who I trained under for another year. Kapua spoke very little and only showed us the dance once so we would have to absorb as much as we could. This was just before the war and we would go once a week and dance without a break from six p.m. to eight p.m. Back in those days you didn’t question the kumu, instead they questioned you. It was an era where children were seen and not heard. At eight o’clock the siren atop Aloha Tower would sound signaling the curfew and we would pick up our things and hurry home. When I turned fifteen I trained under Joseph ʻĪlālāʻole with whom I stayed for the next three years. From Īlālāʻole I learned dances with a faster tempo and greater foot movement. In those days many of the teachers carried a long rod of bamboo and if you made a sloppy motion you got a little sting on your ankles. Every teacher in those days was strict and if they didn’t feel you were ready to progress you just stayed put. I went through two traditional graduations with ‘Īlālāʻole. The first night of the graduation would be a pā‘ina involving only dancers and the ho‘opa‘a. The second night would be a hō‘ike where all the parents and friends would be invited. When I teach someone it’s important that they adhere to what they have been taught. My elders always stressed that ancient hula, the chants, and dances passed down from generation to generation, should be taught as it was learned. I find it discouraging because there have been occasions where I have taught a traditional dance and later found it unrecognizable because of changes by my students.
Frank Kawaikapuokalani K. Hewett
Frank Hewett, a faculty member of the Windward Community College, is the kumu hula of the Kuhai Halau O Kawaikapuokalani Pa ‘Olapa Kahiko
The greatest hardship for me was to live under the strict kapus I trained under for twenty years. But I love to dance and the people that taught me were so inspiring that I have no regrets. When I dance I offer certain evocations to ask certain spirits to become a part of me so that they may be happy again in coming back to life through me. That’s what gives me great joy because that’s what the hula is all about. My grandmother Eva Kana‘e was a dancer so the hula was something that surrounded me as I grew up. She spoke Hawaiian and it was through her that I was taught the foundations of my hula and the history of He‘eia and Kealohi. I spent eighteen years with my grandmother and she instilled in me a great love for hula kahiko and hula ‘auana. After my grandmother I spent a year with Edith Kanaka‘ole. Aunty Edith taught me how to give. I remember one time she was asked why she taught the hula to the Haole and she replied ‘Because, we are all God’s children.’ She made me aware of the disadvantages of being too generous but she inspired me to give out because that’s why I was given the knowledge. After Aunty Edith I spent ten years with Aunty Emma deFries who took me to the very depth of the hula, back to its very beginnings and foundations. She said that the beginnings of the hula is the essence of our people, and she explained the workings of the kapus to me and the symbolism of the different colors and plants in nature. I began to teach in 1978 in He‘eia and Kealohi because my family has roots there. I don’t train performers; my students have to be content with just gaining knowledge. Hawaiians are not lazy like we have been stereotyped and that’s what I’ve been trying to do, break the stereotypes that brand the Hawaiians. The biggest problem we have today is the broad use of the title of kumu hula. The people of today are training for one or two years when in fact they should be training for ten to twenty years. There has to be definite divisions in the hula because the title of kumu must carry dignity. There has to be an orderly, credible procession up the ranks. My opinion is that there should be four distinct levels of study in the traditional hula. The premier level should be the kumu hula and the people within this division should be sources of knowledge within themselves. The kumu hula should be well- versed in all aspects of the hula. Below this division should be the hula teacher who would be allowed to teach only with his or her kumu hula acting as a mentor. They would be designated as pa hula or teachers of hula. The third division would consist of senior students and they would be called alaka‘i. An alaka‘i would be a student in training with either a kumu hula or a pa hula and they would act as the dance leaders on the floor and would be placed in the front line. The fourth division would be filled with beginning students and they would be called ho‘opili because they are strictly mimics of their teachers. Hula is not just dancing and chanting but a deeper spiritual aspect which must be accrued by the student and cannot be picked up in one or two years. In the days of our ancestors, a student would train one five-year period in the ho‘opili division and one five- year period in the alaka‘i division. This five-year period was called a palima and two palima were designated as a hale ‘umi. The kumu hula would ‘uniki each student to the next level and only the best students after completing a hale ‘umi of training would be chosen by the kumu to be trained as kumu hula. By custom the pa hula would only move up to the level of kumu hula after the passing away of their kumu. It was an entire social system of selection that hardly exists today. I think what’s starting now is that anybody can stand up and say they’re a kumu hula and if it continues the hula will be demeaned and become common. There is a need for the kumu hula to come together and set standards and express concerns about what is happening in the hula world. Today it is the dance motions in kahiko that command all the attention because the Hawaiian of today does not understand the language. That’s why today’s motions are so vigorous and exaggerated. The dancers are trying to tell the story totally through the motions of the dance. Hula kahiko must be passed down in its entirety from generation to generation because only then does the culture that the kahiko is expressing remain intact. Hula is a religious ceremony to the Hawaiian gods and goddesses of our ancestors and we can’t get away from that. I think creativity can be allowed in the hand movements but the five basic foot movements must be left alone. Each movement symbolizes something important and if they are embellished then we have blurred the lines.
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.
Mililani Allen began her teaching career in 1973 with the founding of Hālau Hula O Mililani in Waianae, 0‘ahu. In the last ten years, the most significant change perpetuated upon the hula has been an increase of respect, scholarship, and interest. People have recognized it as a classical art expression of the Hawaiian culture. However, the style of dancing has changed because the greater emphasis today is on the dance itself rather than the language and poetry. I don’t look upon this as negative. There are so many of us that lack the fluency of the language and the understanding of the poetry. So the emphasis is now on the dance form rather than the verbiage of the mele. It is just another transition that has happened. Exposed to hula at the age of six by my mother, I began my formal training under Aunty Mā‘iki Aiu Lake at the age of eleven. The lessons continued for three years until I entered high school and then they were interrupted by piano lessons then college. It was during my college years that my appreciation for the hula was nurtured and revitalized. Realizing my lack of knowledge in the art form contributed to my learning process and eventually it brought me back into the hālau after graduation from college. I enrolled in Aunty Mā‘iki’s hula kahiko class and she emphasized the mechanics of the hula, the value of research, and written documentation of everything we learned. Her method to convey this knowledge of our culture was as much an oral presentation (“talk story”) as it was classroom-oriented. It was a positive reinforcement method and we were trained with succinctness. Aunty Mā‘iki would first write the chants on a chalkboard and she would chant it for us. We were instructed to repeat the chant then allowed to write it in our notebooks. She was very positive in her approach. This was the most distinctive aspect of her teaching style and she remains a great influence on me today. After my ‘ūniki with Aunty Mā‘iki, I studied with Aunty Edith Kanaka‘ole in workshops and Hawaiiana classes. Her teaching style was similar to Aunty Mā‘iki’s in that there was a tremendous giving atmosphere to Aunty Edith. It made me feel at ease and it allowed me the strength to give everything of myself. A lot of my style of dancing has been directly influenced by Aunty Edith so my hula kahiko is very simple. I’ve tried to keep in mind that the dancer is only the embellishment of the mele. In 1973 I was now a wife and mother and my teaching career as a kumu hula became a reality. Before my sons were born I had been with the Department of Education, and hula teaching became the solution at the time to combine the continuation of my immersion into the Hawaiian culture and the raising of my children. So far the reward and sacrifices have a way of balancing out. The formation of an ‘ohana demands sacrifice but it gives its own rewards. I think the most important service offered by my teaching has been the creation of a place for people, mostly women, to belong to apart from their daily routine and family. However, the privacy of my family is part of the sacrifice of being a kumu hula. The hālau members become part of your family and my time is shared with everyone. While this has been especially tough on my family, it has made my children stronger and better people. The hula kahiko has changed but I think it is best to keep an open mind about these changes. My advice to my students is don’t put down someone because you think you know it all. You have to keep an open mind about people who want to study hula and about other members of other hālau. In the hula there are so many different styles of dancing, so many lines of knowledge, who’s to say what is right or wrong? We don’t know. I don’t think there was ever one right or wrong. In retrospect I don’t think there was ever one style of dancing in the hula. Hopefully, we will continue to develop many more.
Nā Kumu Hula Kawai Aona-Ueoka - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 1 Page 14
Kawai Aona has served as kumu hula for the Queen Liliʻuokalani Childrenʻs Center since 1979. I was hānai by my Tūtū Mary C. Pua‘ala Aona from the time I was a baby. I knew basic Hawaiian words and phrases and some hula ‘auwana from my tūtū but to me it was nothing because Tūtū could speak Hawaiian fluently, and I’ve been told that she also taught hula kahiko. When I first went to the University of Hawai‘i, I was this tita from Nanakuli. I was dorming on campus and one day these two Japanese exchange students came up to me and asked, ‘Are you Hawaiian?’ I answered yes proudly and then they asked, ‘Can you do the hula or speak Hawaiian?’ I said no, and they gave me a funny expression and said, ‘You not Hawaiian then.’ I got very angry but I found the strength to control myself and went to my room to think. I came to the conclusion that they were right. I was born with Hawaiian blood and my tūtū had a wealth of knowledge but I never really understood it. The Hawaiian culture I knew was surface. Having the Hawaiian blood and doing things Hawaiian is not enough. You have to understand, and have a respect and feeling for the culture in a deeper sense. The kaona was the essence of all mele because our kupuna were not surface people. After that incident, I made it a point to learn more of the language and more of the hula. I was introduced to Aunty Mā‘iki Aiu Lake by some friends that were taking hula ‘auwana classes from her. It took about a year of taking ‘auwana classes before Aunty invited a few of us to enter her hula kahiko class. I studied with Aunty Mā‘iki for two and a half years and she made Hawaiian history come alive through the mele. Her requirement for research gave me an understanding of the many things my tūtū had said and done but didn’t know how to explain. I began to understand the depth of Hawaiian values and the importance of respecting all that it stood for. I graduated traditionally from Aunty Mā‘iki’s ‘Ilima class in 1975, and I went on to Aunty Edith McKinzie who helped to develop my oli by training me in the different styles and techniques of the oli tradition. I began teaching as kumu kokua with Mililani Allen in 1977, and in all my years of growth I have learned that a kumu hula is not just a title but a great responsibility. You are not only the source of technical knowledge but also a model for the behavior of your haumāna. Hula kahiko, as I know it, is a whole system of values and responsibilities that you have to live and believe in. The process of learning and teaching this tradition is never ending and always growing. I went to the University of Hawai‘i to study fine arts. I was educated in sketching, painting, sculpture, poetry, and photography. They were all art forms from which people could express their feelings. The hula is also an art form from which the kumu hula expresses their manaʻo of our Hawaiian culture but we have to remember that our source is our strength and our essence. We have to hold sacred the teachings of our kumu and the values of our kupuna. A lot of our young Hawaiians are lost today. They don’t have the confidence in themselves and it’s difficult for them to see how they fit in this ever-changing world of Western values. It’s hard to believe in yourself when you don’t even know what you have to be proud of. What are the concepts behind words like aloha, kōkua, laulima, lōkahi, ‘oia‘i‘o, hō‘ihi, ‘ohana, mālama, and ho‘oponopono? I teach hula with emphasis on cultural understanding, respect, and pride for the elements within each mele as well as its kaona. If my haumāna leave me with a respect for their kupuna, each other and themselves then it will be that much easier to apply the Hawaiian concepts and values in this modern world we live in. Na ‘Ōpio O Hawai‘i Nei To dance the hula is to live it To understand the mele is to seek its kaona To express the meaning is to feel it To love the hula is to respect its source
Lovey Leina‘ala Yau Choy Apana
Lovey Leina‘āla Yau Choy Apana “Aunty Lovey” Apana began to teach on O‘ahu in 1963 and in 1970 opened her studio on Kaua‘i. As I reflect upon my growing- up years I was always involved in school programs that involved Hawaiiana whether it was the May Day program or commemorative honors for King Kamehameha. While still young I worked within the tourist industry and I traveled throughout the world. I entertained on the side but I still felt something missing in my life. There was an incomplete ingredient to “level” the bread of life and happiness. Thus I went to my tūtū lady for advice and discussed my future with her and she encouraged me to teach hula. She said I possessed the gift of laughter and patience and that I should continually teach children. She also said the hula was an integral part of our family many years back and that I had the responsibility to study hard and to try my best to perpetuate the art. I am very grateful to my late tūtū Caroline Apao and my mother Christine Apana who still inspire me today as I dance or teach the hula. I also look to other teachers who were and are part of my life in the Twentieth Century such as Tūtū Roberts, Aunty Kuchie Kuhns, Aunty Sally Wood Nalua‘i, and Aunty Hoakalei Kamau‘u among others. All of these people served as my resources in my Hawaiian studies. There have been tremendous changes in the hula but I cannot downgrade or resist these changes because the Hawai‘i of the past is not the Hawai‘i of today. We have no choice but to grow and adapt to this modern world. What makes me uneasy is that many people today seem to see the production of the dance and not the intrinsic value of the art and the traditions. If someone wants to create in the traditional hula they must use a composition written today in the traditional style and choreograph that. Today young people are going deep into certain facets of the culture and they wish to recreate and relive the ancestral ways of their forefathers. They must have the proper training and preparation or they will be lost because they are modern people trying to go back into an ancient world.
Roselle Keli‘ihonipua Bailey
Roselle Keli‘ihonipua Bailey Roselle Bailey is the founder of the hula hālau Ka‘Imi Na‘auao O Hawaii Nei and currently makes her home in Kaumakani, Kaua‘i. In 1971 I had just come back from living abroad. I was literally more Arab than Hawaiian. From head to toe I was really a foreigner, from my clothes, to my speech, to my gestures. While living in Iraq I would have dreams of home. I would dream of Hawaiian words and phrases half a world away. When I came home Aunty Edith Kanaka‘ole was the only one that said she would help me. When I got together with Aunty Edith, it was like coming back to my roots. I would go once a week to her home for chanting lessons. The lessons included much more than chanting. We did a lot of talking about ‘ohana, giving openly and not holding anything back. For that I give Aunty Edith a lot of credit. She had that kind of soul thinking and feeling. My first kumu was Aunty Emma Sharpe. When a person is four-years-old, he or she is never interested in the hula as a profession. I was just told to dance. From four years old to the fourth grade I thought of nothing but to be a good child and follow directions. Later, I started to teach my own peers in high school but I’ve never considered myself a kumu hula although others have called me that. To me an ‘ūniki means that you have graduated in the traditional ceremonies and you are qualified to go on to teach. I’ve never gone through a traditional ‘ūniki. I think the qualifications for a kumu are tremendous because you not only have to know the motions of the hula but you have to be able to interpret a mele, visually and vocally. A true kumu has to be a psychologist, psychoanalyst, historian, naturalist, priest, choreographer, nurse, sister, and mother. Today I base a great amount of my work upon the background of the twenty lessons that I received from Aunty Kau‘i Zuttermeister in 1974-75. It was what Aunty Edith taught me in 1971 that helped me understand and appreciate what Aunty Kau‘i stressed in 1974. Aunty Emma set my foundation and my chanting style in a combination of Aunty Edith and Aunty Kau‘i but it is my parents that I consider my keepers. My mother trained under Aunty Emma and Lydia Kekuewa, and my father trained under his great-granduncle whom we call Tūtū Lama. These people helped set the foundation for our hālau which has been in existence for over ten years. Today you have many more people in the hula so you have a lot of outside influences. I see ballet, modern dance and martial arts movements being used in the hula. Every mele dictates a certain kind of hula and certain styles of drumming belong to certain instruments as opposed to another. You shouldn’t put an ipu beat on a pahu but it’s being done today. I think there has to be an awareness of two categories within the kahiko being performed today. There is the hula kahiko that has been handed down from generation to generation that is a classical dance. Then there is a hula kahiko composed today in the style of the traditional hula. It is this contemporary kahiko that we are seeing the most of today. The hula offers the modern Hawaiian of today a sense of identification. I feel that is most important. It is something from their culture that they can actually see that has been done for eons and they can say that’s a part of me. That’s the reason why we have to keep the traditional hula within it’s own realm or something is going to be lost from this record of our past.
Mrs. Louise L. Beamer Louise Beamer is the daughter-in-law of Helen Desha Beamer and has taught the hula for forty-nine years. She currently resides on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. I was born on January 22, 1907 in Honolulu and in 1923 at the age of sixteen I married into the Beamer family. My husband’s mother was Helen Desha Beamer and she lived in Hilo on the Big Island. Mother Beamer was a musician, a composer, a dancer, and she was my first kumu. She taught me everything. Mother Beamer always taught at her mothers home on Eighth Avenue in Kaimuki whenever she visited Honolulu. All the young ladies would come to learn and there would be thirty young women dancing in the living room. Now Mahi’s (Mahi Beamer) mother and I, the two daughters-in-law, would stand in the backline and that’s how I really got started. Mother Beamer had her own way of teaching. She didn’t do too much dancing for you or with you. She got up and showed you the dance one time. She taught ‘auwana the same way, she would sit at the piano and play it one time. You were allowed to watch the motions and listen to the words once, and then you were expected to get up and do it all. The hula that we were taught was simple and subtle. The subtler the better. Our knees were always drawn up rather than outward when we would ‘uwehe and the dance always projected the words of the chant. I went through the process of learning the hula kapu but because of the kapus associated with the dance, I’ve chosen never to teach it. Mama had a very beautiful way of teaching. She always told me, ‘You know Lou, you always have to be aware of how you are teaching. You always have to teach your students the way you would have wanted to be taught.’ What she meant was a teacher had to go down to the level of each student. I first began to teach at home in ‘Alewa Heights. We had a very long porch with a spectacular view of Pearl Harbor and that’s where I held my classes for five years. Sometimes I would teach a student something and she would get it right away. But in the next class another student might not get it at all. I always remembered what she told me and I would go home and figure out another way to teach the lesson. Mother Beamer told me that there’s always a reason why the child understands and doesn’t understand, and it’s an excuse to brand the child as stupid. To tell the truth I wasn’t too keen about the idea of teaching at the very beginning. I was nineteen-years-old and I didn’t have the confidence in myself to be a teacher but she believed in me and that’s how I started to teach. I took over her classes at Punahou School and in 1934 I opened my hālau in Waikiki next to the old Kodak building. In those days I used to work in hula from seven in the morning till seven at night. I would close my studio door and drive home and there was so much joy for me to open the door and come home to my children. I think the greatest sacrifice I had to make was the time I couldn’t spend with my family because of my work. There were mornings that I would feel a little low but when I got to that studio I would turn on the Victorola and I would forget everything outside. Whatever problems I might have had disappeared. Suddenly my whole life would be inside that studio. I just enjoyed it so. Mother Beamer always told me that when you perform the hula you always want to portray your best side, the good side. The other side never. You just keep that to yourself. We weren’t even permitted to dance naughty hulas. I’m from the old school of training and it’s hard for me to understand the changes in the hula of today. Kumu hula has been my life’s work, as well as the work of my daughters and their daughters. It disturbs me when unqualified hula instructors identify themselves as kumu hula. The right to this identity must be earned.
Winona Beamer Nona Beamer is the daughter of Louise Beamer and is the mother of Keola and Kapono Beamer. She currently serves on the Native Hawaiian Study Commission and is a member of the faculty of the Kamehameha Schools. The house in Hilo is right on the banks of the Wailuku River. “Sweetheart Grandma” always had stalks of bamboo in the corners of the house and there was a gentle breeze, a nice flow of air always drifting through the house. I was mesmerized by the feeling of this breeze, how soothing it was as it mixed with the sounds of the river and the rustling of the bamboo. The hula for me was a family obligation. I’m not sure if I really liked it when I began. My earliest recollection of dancing was at the Volcano on the Big Island. It was cold and there was gravel on the ground and I was very upset with my grandmother for making me dance. My first kumu were my great-grandmother Isabella Desha and my grandmother Helen Desha Beamer whom we called “Sweetheart Grandma.” She was a great inspiration to me. She was always trying to train us to have the right feelings within ourselves so that we could experience the calmness that was all around us. When we walked into a room we had to walk as if our feet weren’t touching the mat. If she heard your feet scuffling the mat you would have to go out and come in again. Sometimes she would train us outside and the fragrance of the leaves and mangoes would be all around. There was a hallway in the house where my grandfather had collected war implements from all over the world, and as a little girl it would frighten me to go through that hall and into the room where we danced. My grandmother would give each of us a tī leaf and talk about faith and hope and love. She would tell us the chants of Laka and she would tell them as if Laka was right there. While she talked she would tell us to feel the shape and the texture of the leaves and to put them up to our faces and feel their smoothness. She would talk of the mist over the mountains being the spirit of Laka and so everything that we do and say should be pleasing. So of course we would try our very best since we had a spirit watching over us. In 1927 my mother opened a studio on the second floor of the old Kodak building in Waikiki and in 1934 I began to teach for her. My mother had a tremendous influence on me because she is a master teacher and she gave me a firm foundation in every aspect of my education. I remember teaching Mary Pickford a hapa Haole number “To You Sweetheart Aloha” and holding her hands like my grandmother used to do. Her hands were so small and delicate almost as if there were no bones within them. When I came to the Kamehameha Schools, I began working with underprivileged Hawaiian children at the Kakaʻako Mission School. I stayed with the program for four years because I just loved working with the children. They were more enthralled with my story-telling than anything else. They would be restless and so I would calm them down with a story. Their eyes would get big and it struck me that this was a way to convey the Hawaiian culture to them in a non- aggressive, natural way. Maybe I could have made more money in other pursuits but I never considered anything else but teaching. Each individual student is so precious and so important. It’s that feeling I get when there’s a little bit of response in the eyes when you strike a little bit of interest in them. I think the biggest key to teaching is letting them know you care about them. After that a class session becomes an affair of the family. Being Hawaiian at the Kamehameha Schools in the 1940’s was a hardship. It took us such a long time to gain a sense of our Hawaiianess. The great sadness of my life was trying to tell and teach people about the worthiness of the Hawaiian culture. It was so hard for people to believe. In 1949 almost out of desperation we decided to showcase the culture through lectures and performances at colleges and universities. We went on a fourteen-month tour of the Mainland and Mexico and we ended in New York City at the Carnegie Hall. We were trying to take the culture out of the sideshows and circuses and bring it to a level of dignity because you couldn’t even give it away in Hawai‘i. The traditional kahiko to my understanding is the literature handed down by each generation from our forefathers. The kumu of today are trying their best but they are creating a new literature, a contemporary kahiko. I’d like to see standardization arise in the next ten years. We don’t need compartmentalization but some kind of control that would encourage quality. We need a clearinghouse where ideas and problems could be talked out and different degrees of competency established for hula teachers and students.
Tita Beamer Solomon Tita Solomon is the daughter of Louise Beamer and makes her home today in Kohala, Hawaiʻi. In our family, hula is a way of life. We have always been in the arts. My daughters Malama and Hulali represent the fifth generation. It has never been a question of choice but a commitment to our culture. My sister, Nona (Nona Beamer) and I spent every summer on the Big Island of Hawai‘i with our grandmother Helen Desha Beamer and we were brought up with music and hula. We thought every family played the ‘ukulele, sang, and danced. This was Grandmas philosophy for all of us and how we took it from there was our own kuleana. Everybody had to be trained in the fundamentals of dance and music, so while other children were outside playing, we were with the family practicing. For Mother and Grandmother, the Hawaiian language was their first language but for my generation it was more important to learn English. The hula encompasses everything in the Hawaiian culture and Grandmother realized that unless she got all of us involved with the Hawaiian arts we would lose the Hawaiianess in our lives. I began to dance at the age of two under Mother and Grandmother, and I was taught both kahiko and ‘auwana. When Grandmother would come to Honolulu, Nona and I would dance in the backline of her hula classes. Mother shared with us the quiet and the beauty of the art while Grandmother stressed discipline and perfection. The hula was something very special and we had to take care when we studied or danced it. I graduated from the Kamehameha Schools and enrolled at the College of the Pacific in California. A local YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) was putting together a Hawaiian cultural program and I was asked to teach. This was how I began. I taught easy Haole hula because I wanted them to enjoy the art and not be intimidated with the culture. You always have to keep in mind that we are taking the Hawaiian lifestyle and sharing it with keikis who are coming from all different backgrounds. Hopefully they will blend it with their own. I do believe, however, that if a student of five trains with us until she is eighteen, no matter what her cultural background may be, she will know as much about the hula as any dancer. We are training children of all racial backgrounds to be proud of themselves and their heritage. So where does the hula go from here? In Grandmothers and Mothers time everything was changing with the influx of foreigners and Waikiki was the only public showplace. For the hula to survive, it was taken from the home and the family and made available to everyone. Grandmother felt if we taught the keiki well then they would always have a love for Hawai‘i and the Hawaiian culture. Today you’ll see an image of the Hawaiian culture in Waikiki that is dominated solely by economics and this is what upsets me. The hula is not just an expression of the culture, it is the heart of the culture. Today people are changing the hula and in fact are changing the Hawaiian culture. Unfortunately in time we may find that it’s easier to change the culture rather than perpetuate it. Malama Solomon Malama Solomon is the daughter of Tita Beamer Solomon and currently serves as a senator in the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. I participated in a women’s conference in Hilo. When questioned if as a Hawaiian woman had I ever experienced an identity crisis, I responded, ‘No, because of my family’s involvement in the culture and the arts.’ The longevity of the hula definitely expresses the self- determination of the Hawaiians to survive in view of adverse conditions. From my grandmother’s generation till today, our culture has been subjected to a tremendous transition with pressures from Oriental and Western immigration. The influence of hula has kept our cultural vitality. Hawaiian music and dance not only identified the Hawaiian community as different but it also served an economic purpose. My sister Hulali Solomon and I were tutored by Grandmother and Mother. We were taught as toddlers, and discipline and adherence to the authority of the kumu hula was mandatory. Today, learners treat authority casually. The strength of our hālau is through the process of discussions and kūkākūkā; in collective thinking we can create. Accountability to each other’s interpretation of the art is the core and the end product of our hālau, and the dance reflects this input of three generations. My sister and I work well together and share the responsibilities of the hālau. Unlike many families which have been torn apart due to artistic differences and competition between its members, she and I were never pitted against each other and the family always had the last word in settling artistic differences. In our hālau training, dance choreography commenced only after in-depth discussions focusing on the personalities we were portraying. Discussions would detail for example, Pele’s different personalities, the power of her position among the gods and among the Hawaiian community. To be culturally correct demanded the comprehension of the characters before they could be executed through the dance. At the age of nineteen, Hulali and I participated in a workshop under the direction of Uncle Henry Pa. The learning experience was totally different from our family hālau. His views articulated dance-style conformity. He described the ipu as the commander and a different pa‘i would signal a command. The lesson learned was only through humility can a student of one kumu hula learn the discipline of another. I became an alaka‘i to teach hula at the age of fourteen under the stewardship of Mother and Grandmother. Today due to my schedule as a legislator, Hulali serves as the kumu hula in our hālau. The disappointment to us as the ones perpetuating our family art is the effort on the part of so many to standardize the hula. The cause of this we believe is that today’s teachers do not have the wealth and background of a family hālau to draw creativity from. The contemporary artist in the performance of the dance is relying on competitions to generate interest in the preservation and perpetuation of the dance. In prior years hula performances radiated with a feeling of sharing manao. It was a time to socialize with one another unlike contemporary counterparts who advocate professional separatism. The question becomes, “Are winners of contests the role models for our art form?” Secondly, how are we to control the extent of the commercialism of the hula? In a Western cultural context, a group of professional elite would be asked to resolve these questions but in the Hawaiian culture the expression of disapproval in contests, etc., is resolved by non-participation. The problems created through contests illustrates the cultural reality that you cannot strain the hula through a Western sieve and be assured of the art form’s perpetuity.
Ku‘uleialoha Beckman Kuʻulei Beckman is the niece of Aunty Alice Nāmakelua. She began her teaching career at the age of seventeen under the supervision of her family. I think the greatest hardship I had as a dancer was believing that at one time I would appreciate the knowledge that was being given to me. I started my training in the hula at four- years-old and it wasn’t until I became a teacher at the age of nineteen that I realized and appreciated all of what was taught to me. My advice to the young dancers is to be faithful and loyal to what has been taught to them. Be grateful that someone opened up and shared the knowledge with you. It’s only when you grow older that you appreciate the beauty of your own culture. I’m very grateful to have had three kumu hula who took precious time and effort in teaching me. My first kumu was my grandmother Emily Keko‘olani, and I studied under her for two years. My grandmother had trained under Pua Ha‘aheo and ‘Iolani Luahine so my classes were really in the style of the “old school”. Everything was very strict and very disciplined, and I wasn’t allowed to speak my mind. My mother Katherine Kahanohano Keko‘olani Dambley and my aunt Myra Kolani Chartrand, took over my training after my grandmother and I found them to be much more precise. My mother was taught by my grandmother so I was consistently trained to be attentive to the precise motions of my hands. The result is that the dancer looks like she knows and loves what she’s dancing about and the audience is drawn into the hula. The foremost kumu in my life was my mother and I began to teach at seventeen with her as my mentor. At nineteen I went out on my own because I felt I had been given so much knowledge and I wanted to pass on the knowledge to my own children before I began to lose it. I teach my students with less intensity than I believe my grandmother trained because today’s students don’t reside with their kumu. But I feel the best part of teaching is still and will always be helping students overcome their personal handicaps and limitations.
Ho‘oulu Cambra Ho‘oulu Cambra is a member of the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and the Kamehameha Schools. If a person has Hawaiian blood, one might presume this precludes an inherent awareness, an affinity to the culture from within enabling one to catch on to the knowledge of the hula and the chants faster than a non-Hawaiian because this is the history of the race, this is the individual’s past. My life in the hula has really been an outgrowth from my training in music, Hawaiian language, and chant. In 1956 I attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. My first love is music and I was taught to teach it in the public schools but I began to realize that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do forever. When I returned from the Mainland in 1958, I taught piano at the Punahou Music School to make ends meet but I became restless so I took up ethnomusicology at the University which is a more scientific approach to the music of the world. My interest at that time was in the Hawaiian language and between 1958 and 1964 I studied under Rob Brown, Edwina Kanoho, Dr. Samuel Elbert, Kalani Meinecke, and Dorothy Kahananui. In 1962 I was introduced to Dorothy Gillett, the daughter of Dorothy Kahananui, and it was Mrs. Gillett who got me excited about traditional Hawaiian chanting. I was an East-West Center grantee studying Polynesian dance and music at the time, and from Mrs. Gillett I was led to Ka‘upena Wong who took me even deeper into the knowledge and traditions of chant. The next logical step from the chant was to be trained in the dance. In 1971 I met Aunty Mā‘iki Aiu Lake and she has been my greatest influence because she taught me the intricacies of teaching the hula. She gave me a methodology and a set of goals to guide myself. I went to Aunty Mā‘iki because I felt I needed an academic, university-style regimen since I was starting my training so late in life. I needed to absorb so much, so I needed a hālau with a strong structure. I had studied at the University under Hoakalei KamauTi in 1965 — 66 but Aunty Ma‘iki was the first regimented academic situation I had in the hula. Ma‘iki’s class was a school in that it had a curriculum and expectations. There were examinations to be passed and assignments to be completed. I graduated as the first kumu hula of Hālau Hula O Māʻiki in August of 1972 in a traditional ‘ūniki. In 1975 I went on to train under Aunty Kau‘i Zuttermeister for six months. There I was taught to chant in the Pua Ha‘aheo style and I found the discipline and regimentation of Aunty Kau‘i’s hālau similar to Aunty Māʻiki’s school. Some of my kumu have had a greater influence on me than others but I am grateful to all of them because they were all there to share with me at a time when I was hungry for their knowledge. I began to give individual instruction in traditional chant for beginners in 1967 at the Music Department of the University with the approval of Dorothy Gillett, Kaʻupena Wong, and Hoakalei Kamauu and that was the start of my teaching career. I regard the hula as an art, specifically a living art that must be worked at and prepared for constantly. This is a very slow, tedious process that requires many procedures because I insist that my students study the history and culture relevant to the particular dance and chant they are learning. It has always amazed me how the composers of these chants were able to combine major ideas and themes into a few, concise, terse lines. You can’t help but respect and admire the Hawaiian culture if you know the language and can read the chants. Hula is a way of life, it is a people’s inspiration. It is the Hawaiian’s connection to the universe around him. That is why books and pencils have very little place in this type of school. The dilemma is of course that without paper and pencil today’s students would have great difficulty retaining what I have to pass down to them. My kumu taught me that contemporary chants and hula written in the kahiko style cannot be considered traditional. It must be handed down from generation to generation in its entirety. Kahiko is a convenient term used more to define what is not modern hula rather than what is traditional hula. I don’t know if students are learning the vast vocabulary of the hula and the chants that are essential to its perpetuation. Our young people are very impatient and very eager for the finished product. Audiences of today seem to goad the dancer into dancing more suggestively. The more exaggerated the dancer’s ‘ami, the more it satisfies the audience. The modern audience is attracted mainly to the graphics of the dance. Their reaction to the hula ma‘i at times is to hoot and yell. These are products of the American culture where talk of sex is suppressed and thus when they see hula ma‘i, it’s their chance to react freely.
Wayne Wai Keahi Chang In 1975 Wayne Chang and Robert Cazimero co-founded Hālau Nā Kamalei, one of several mens hālau that helped to revolutionize the popular notion of menʻs hula in the community. He is currently Director of Admissions at the Kamehameha Schools. My advice to the young dancers of today is stay with the dance. Don’t look for added rewards. Don’t look beyond the enjoyment of dance. The dance must be treated as art or else it becomes an endless circle of performances. If you are looking to use the hula only as a vehicle for greater reward you are making a mistake. You must be able to dance in a room with no one around and feel the force of hula. You shouldn’t need anybody to watch you. My first kumu was Aunty Nona Beamer who I first met in 1968 as a senior at Kamehameha Schools. From the start what Nona gave me was a joy for performing and dancing. I was raised on the Mainland until I was thirteen so I didn’t have a Hawaiian background to fall back on. I did not know the pronunciation and meanings of Hawaiian words so Nona was the perfect teacher for the level that I was at. I think if my introduction to the hula had been more accelerated I would have been intimidated by the culture. With Nona if you danced in time to the beat and you enjoyed yourself that was enough. It wasn’t important to be perfectly synchronized with the other dancers. If the audience enjoyed the dance and could see you enjoying yourself that’s what really mattered. I studied with Nona for a year and then in 1974 I began my training under Aunty Māʻiki Aiu Lake. The hālau at that time was located on Ke‘eaumoku Street and in Mā’iki’s school the hula was presented as a form of study and discipline which was something I had never encountered before. There was a sense of continuity that permeated Māʻiki’s teaching. She stressed that the traditional chants must be protected and perpetuated. She tempered this by encouraging us to create new mele and new choreography. My ‘ūniki was held in 1976 and it was a solemn exercise. Many things were not explained but left up to the individual student to interpret as it happened. Frankly the need for definitions and boundaries were unnecessary. The event generated precise feelings without the need for definition. In 1979 I was led to Kau‘i Zuttermeister who I am still training under today. Aunty Ma‘iki taught me a reverence for hula and an awareness that there was a reason for every action in the preparation and performance of the dance but Aunty Kau‘i illuminated the boundaries and protocol within the dance and the importance of acting within that framework. I began to teach in 1974 because I wanted to build a “better mousetrap” so to speak. There was a demand for my teaching and I wanted to find out if I could improve upon the teaching styles that were handed down to me. When I was being trained the hula was my first priority. It came before work, family responsibilities, and personal commitments. This carried over to when I became a teacher and I stopped teaching in 1979 because of this attitude. A true kumu is responsible for the actions and behaviour of his haumāna, and after six years I needed to escape the burden of these obligations. I needed to get my world back into a proper perspective. Leaving Nā Kamalei, which I had co-founded in 1975 with Robert Cazimero, had to be the hardest experience in my career. It meant a total re-establishment and re-evaluation of priorities and goals that I had held all my life. Being human I totally enjoyed the pageantry and public response to our work but I began to question the wisdom of using performance as a measure of success and achievement. The hula has become overstated and this has affected the intensity of the interest of the hula community that used to exist between 1975 and 1980. The wild crowds aren’t there anymore so some kumu are choreographing bigger and brasher dances and they are depending on the audience’s reaction for their gratification. Most hālaus have reduced the number of their performances and few of these performances are money-makers. Ironically, the creative freshness and integrity of the hula will be protected and retained because of such economic pressure. Hālaus will survive and dancers will dance in the future for the pleasure and knowledge of hula and not necessarily for public approval or financial gain.
Rena Maile-Māhoe Apo Ching
Rena Maile-Māhoe Apo Ching Rena Ching began her training as a hula student on Maui and currently makes her home in Kahului. My first hula teachers were actually my family and I was pushed into it whether I liked it or not at the age of four. My grandmother Annie Kala‘au had come from Kona and she had been trained in ‘ōlapa. My aunty Helen Apo Hanu was taught by my grandmother and she was my first teacher. My first kumu outside the family was Alice Keawekane Garner. She would put on concerts at the county church and she was a member of the Mormon Church. Aunty Alice needed a place to teach so my mother offered her our home because we had a big lānai. She would teach and I would sit down and watch. I graduated from Aunty Alice in her home in a very modern ‘ūniki. When Aunty Alice left Maui I returned to study with my aunt Mrs. Helen Apo Hanu. Then I began to dance professionally for Eddie Tam, the late mayor of Maui. When I got married my husband refused to let me dance professionally so I began to train my little girl who was seven. After awhile I wanted to learn ‘ōlapa so I could teach it to my daughter, so my mother recommended Manuel Silva. My mother wanted me to take from Manuel Silva because he was known for his chanting and ancient style of dancing. So my husband and I went to Honolulu to see Mr. Silva who was living in the Kaka‘ako district in the back of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin building at that time. He told me that if he didn’t know my mother he would’ve sent me away because he didn’t take new hula students anymore. His basics were really hard. You had to lay back on the floor with your legs folded under your thighs. You were then required to roll your torso while in that position. Then he would walk on your thighs to limber the leg muscles. I also had to lie flat on my stomach and he would bend my legs back. These were the regular, preliminary exercises prior to learning the hula. When finished with these exercises, I was exhausted. I learned never to complain because he would tell me simply that I was free to leave if I didn’t want to learn. Before learning the movements of the dance, he trained me to pa‘i the ipu and chant the mele. My ‘ōlapa was kapu which meant I could only dance them in certain areas and my dancers had to be trained in certain duties. I did not take the kapu responsibilities because Uncle Manuel did not want me to get hurt if any students were kāpulu in their duties. Unfortunately this meant he would be the one to suffer the consequences for any of their actions which may have unknowingly been affected by the kapu. My kumu Alice Keawekāne Garner and Aunty Helen Apo Hanu taught me hula ‘auwana, and Manuel Silva gave me my foundation in ‘ōlapa. But it was my mother Mary Elizabeth ‘Aikau who encouraged and gave me support to become a kumu hula. She would watch me dance in front of her and she would be my critic. She made sure everything was correct. She was my inspiration.
Agnes Kalaniho‘okaha Cope and Kamaki Kanahele
Nā Kumu Hula Agnes Kalaniho‘okaha Cope and Kamaki Kanahele - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 1 Page 39
Agnes Kalaniho‘okaha Cope Agnes Cope is the executive director and founder of the Waianae Coast Culture and Arts Society. My background in the hula started more than fifty years ago with Tūtū Keaka Kanahele. She was the grandmother of Eleanor Hiram Hoke and she was a hula master of the ’30s. Tūtū Keaka was our neighbor in Kalihi for many years, so it was easy for me to go through the backfence twice-a-week and attend practice. I started with the kahiko and in those days we had to put our hands up against the wall, bend our knees, and go down to the floor until the back of our heads touched the ground. Then Tūtū Keaka would have us rise to our feet and repeat the motion until she was satisfied. It was the old way of training as far as I know of. I practiced with Tūtū Keaka for many years in Kalihi on Mokauea Street and then she moved to King Street where my classes continued every Saturday for four hours. My training lasted fifteen years and it wasn’t until 1969 that I went to another kumu. I must pay tribute to my mother Sarah Kalaniho‘okaha Haku‘ole Mengler and my father Henry T. Mengler who permitted me to attend hula classes and gave me the support and encouragement that I needed at that time. In 1969, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts asked ‘Iolani Luahine and Lokalia Montgomery to select someone to leave their knowledge to. Everyone knew there was Hoakalei Kamau‘u to step into Aunty ‘Io’s place but there was no one for Lokalia. At a conference in Kona at the Hale Hālāwai, Lokalia asked fifteen of us to her home for lunch. At her home she announced that I was the one she had chosen. I told her she had to make another choice because I had other obligations. She pounded the table and said if I was not going to accept, she would take her knowledge with her. So I stayed in Kona for one year, coming home every other week to work and be with my family. My training with her lasted from dawn to dusk, six days a week. If I was on the fourteenth verse of a fifteen-verse chant and made a mistake, I would have to go back and start all over again from the first verse. During my training Lokalia prepared all my meals and did everything for me. If I wanted even a glass of water, Lokalia would serve it to me. All that was asked of me was to train and concentrate. She left with me many chants that have not been heard of. There came a time when the arthritis in my legs began to bother me and I couldn’t bend or rise. At that point my son Kamaki took my place and continued on with her. There is nothing that can compare with the hula lessons that I received from these two great masters. I would like to pay tribute to Tūtū Keaka and Tūtū Lokalia for their efforts, support, and the opportunity they presented me to study the hula under their guidance. Kamaki Kanahele Kamaki Kanahele, son of Mrs. Agnes K. Cope, is currently the administrator of the National Endowment for the Arts, Education Program, in Washington, D.C. I didn’t realize I was interested in the hula because I was already doing it as a part of my everyday life. To me it was normal. My mother and grandparents were my first teachers and we were raised to move, sit right, stand right, and speak correctly. To understand these things is an important part of life. We not only learned basic movements but with it came the use of herbs for healing purposes. This also became a natural learning experience. We were taught the importance of healing the body then developing it. Gathering herbs, chanting its purposes and processes of cleansing and healing, and thanking ke akua, always thanking ke akua. The healing was called lā‘au lapa‘au, lā‘au kahea, ho‘oponopono, lomilomi, and more. The developing was called oilioli, hākōkō, na pa’alula, running, swimming, short-long breathing techniques, concentrating on the na‘au, and many more. Our other games were imitating animals of the land, sea, and sky, and always talking to and thanking ke akua. We learned by watching and repeating. Sometimes doing it daily or only in the mornings. As children we practiced our healing lessons on our dogs. They were very good patients and because we loved them the healing lessons were very wonderful. My grandparents also taught me the closed art of ‘anā‘anā. Our responsibility was to nail the army blankets to the windows to block out the windows. My tūtū said that this lesson was not to be spoken of. We would let he or a visiting kahuna do his work and we just had to watch and learn. All Tūtū said was that this was a necessary part of life. We were always taught with strict observance the protocol of this very ancient art form. In sickness we healed ourselves. For somethings you can heal and cleanse, for others we must return to the teacher or suffer from kāpulu work. We never realized what we had learned or been given until we were adults. Like all children we just wanted to play. Our lessons were our games. In 1963 I went to the Church College of Hawai’i and worked under Aunty Sally Wood Nālua’i and also learned from Aunty Emma Paishon. In that time I worked under the tutorage of George Nā‘ope also. Finally I came to Grandma Lokalia Montgomery. She finished my formal training in the hula kahiko. She told me that I would be her last formally trained student. My family had taught me that the feeling for hula should come from within you, Grandma Lokalia took the feelings of hula and formalized it. She put it into a specific class. It was then that I came to realize that all the things that I had been taught belonged into separate categories under different standards and yet all of it was one in life. To know that each had its own mana‘o, formidable and controlled, Grandma had taken me and had gone over the entire structure of hula. Everything had its place. She was hard-nosed, no- nonsense, and stout. She would summon me at any time of the day or night. So out from Lā‘ie I would drive. I learned that the hula is not just merely getting up to dance or to perform. Instead everytime you stood to dance or sat to chant it was your responsibility to summarize life and hint at its happiness and sadness. Describe the good and the bad, make a beginning, and end it with pride. The dancer becomes an ali‘i, a god, a shark, or a dog. They can be beautiful or arrogant, handsome or ugly. You give the human being a glimpse of his time on earth with a repeat of these reminders each time he comes to the floor. My training took four years and became an image of my upbringing. Grandma gave me an ‘uniki that was personal and loving. For her, my mother, and for all things I thank ke akua. Before her death, Grandma gave me her collection of chants, tableaus, hula notes, compositions, and her love. Aloha ke akua. Our kumu were trained under the structure that was similar and yet distinct from island to island. It is the structure that we must identify and have as a foundation and preserve what has been handed down in hula kahiko. When that precedent is set then everything thereafter becomes ‘auwana. It is healthy for our youth to move beyond this foundation once set. For they have their time in life. They must experience the turtle, the shark, healing, and power. It is unhealthy to state that that structure is binding upon everyone and therefore limit creativity. It is and should be considered an ancestral seed by which to grow. Hula must always have its piko, its center of balance. It is a living energy and a beckoning force. There will always be controversy about what is proper or correct, but a demonstration of the unity of hula in our time can only solidify the remnants of what is left of a great heritage. I feel that the youth, the breath of our life, is giving to us the breath of our dignity. Our contributions then to them is to give what we have as a ho’okupu. It can only make their reach in life a little more comfortable.
Thelma Kāhili Cummings Kāhili Cummings is a daughter of Ida Long and a sister of Mae Loebenstein and Leiana Woodside. She resides on Maui and has taught the hula since age seventeen. I started hula when I was a little girl. There were fifteen of us in the family and we all learned from our mother, even the boys. In those days there was not much entertainment except for fundraisers and church socials that featured hula. My family was always involved with these shows and that’s how I began to dance. My mother Ida Pakulani Long was the greatest influence in my hula. She passed her love and knowledge of the hula to myself and others in our family. When my mother taught us the hula there was very little verbal instruction. There was more actual demonstration and we learned by copying her motions. The pū‘ili was a very important implement in my mother’s hālau. It was used to help us hear the proper timing for the hulas we were learning. It was also used quite often to correct improper hand and feet motions. I was about twelve when Alice Keawekāne Garner began to teach us through the church. From Alice I learned ‘auwana and unlike my mother, she explained a lot of what was going on in the dance. My mother had trained us in kahiko and her knowledge and range of style seemed narrower. I stayed with Alice until I was seventeen and then there was a lull in my training. I went back to the hula only after my sister Mae began to make frequent trips back to Maui. She taught us the dances she had learned in Honolulu while working with Lena Guerrero. I began to teach at the age of seventeen because people needed someone to teach dancers for concerts. I did not ‘ūniki but for a lack of a teacher I was asked to help. I kept helping one group after another and I found that I liked it because it was a way of expressing myself. I like to teach little children because you can get your point across faster than with adults. You can be stern or cross with them and they forget about it. I feel that as long as the chant is composed in the kahiko style, the entire hula should be considered kahiko. But today they have taken ancient hula which has been danced a certain way for generations and have made it into a harder, more aggressive dance because that’s what the modern audiences want. I’m not sure if that is good or bad for the hula. I’m in awe when I see the different kind of steps and the tempo of today. It’s exciting and I enjoy it but when I was being taught there were eight steps to the ancient hula. Today there seems to be a million. If things keep changing our children will not understand the hula and our culture. Our style of living, our clothing, our traditions are either gone, drastically changed, or deteriorated. Our dance and our music are about the only things we are going to be able to hang onto and perpetuate in our culture.
Faye Pomaialoha Dalire Aloha Dalire, kumu hula of Keolalaulani Hālau ‘Olapa O Laka, has taught hula on O‘ahu for over fifteen years. She has the distinct honor of being the first “Miss Aloha Hula” crowned at the Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo. I think the reason why the hula kahiko will prevail and never die is because of all the creativity being done today by the kumu. I was put into the hula at an age when I really didn’t have a mind of my own. When you’re brought up in a family that consists of dancers, you dance. My mother’s name was Mary Keolalaulani McCabe Wong and I consider her the backbone of my career. Without her I wouldn’t be enjoying the hula the way I am today. I started the hula at the age of three under Uncle George Nā‘ope who had graduated my mother and my older sister. Uncle George was a perfectionist and I was trained mostly in ‘auwana. When I turned ten, Uncle George decided to return to the Big Island. At that time Tahitian and Maori dancing were starting to influence the hula. This was in the Sixties and people started to change the scope of their dancing. It wasn’t so much hula anymore but Polynesian dancing. My mother needed a chanter for her ‘ūniki so I began listening to chanting records of ‘Iolani Luahine and tried to imitate her. So I suppose my first lessons in kahiko were taught to me by a record. At the age of twelve I chanted at my mother’s first ‘ūniki and I was approached by Elke Ross-Lane, the executive director of Aloha Week. She asked me to train under her and it was Elke that brought me out of my shell. She showed me how to research material and to make sure that a song or a mele must be understood thoroughly if it’s going to be used. I graduated from my mother at the age of eighteen but it was a very modern ‘ūniki. I had to pass certain tests that were basically a lot of paper work and research into different phases of the hula. It was an exercise in making sure you understood what you were doing and what you were getting into. I began to teach for my mother at the age of fifteen but I still don’t consider myself a kumu because there is so much to learn. When I was growing up in the Fifties there was always a fear of the kahiko because of the consequences of breaking a kapu. I was not able to learn what I consider the real ancient hula because people were not as open and they wouldn’t share. They would just show you and teach you so much and that was it. It’s important that the haumāna be given more today because many students of the past were left with only a half- baked understanding and perspective of the culture.
Māpuana deSilva Māpuana deSilva established Hālau Mōhala ‘Ilima in 1976 which is currently situated in Kailua, O‘ahu. I am learning to hold true to the spirit of what my teacher gave me. I think now that this spirit comes in two parts. First, it is my duty to respect and preserve the traditional dances. If I inherit a holokū from my grandmother I don’t chop it into a mini-skirt just because fashions have changed. The same is true for the chants and hula that have been given to me. They are priceless gifts; I shouldn’t be so presumptuous as to fiddle with them just to keep up with what is fashionable. Secondly, it is also my duty to create. I am a keeper of the record of my own time and of my own place. With my husband Kihei, I create mele hula for my family, my dancers and my Kailua home. We have tried to re-create the chant and dance tradition of Kailua which for several generations has largely been hidden in books and Hawaiian language newspapers. Did you know that Kawainui Marsh was once a fishpond and before that a lagoon? Did you know that Hawaiians have lived on its banks for 1500 years and that Kailua was once immeasurably wealthy and an ancient center for the arts? It’s my duty and pleasure to revive the chants which speak of those things, and to create new mele that remind us of what was, describe what is, and ask of what will be. So you see I’m learning that I have two roles. I’ve tried to keep and honor what was passed on to me, and I’ve worked hard to build through creation and recreation, a tradition of my own. It was after I graduated from college and returned to Hawai‘i that I began taking hula in a serious way. I had been taught hula ‘auwana by my mother as I was growing up but in 1972 I was introduced to Aunty Mā‘iki Aiu Lake and I immediately felt that she was the kumu I wanted to learn the hula from in a deeper way. I started my training that January and I found Aunty Mā‘iki to be a wonderful teacher. She loves the hula so much and she conveys this love to her students. Aunty Mā‘iki made us want to feel and understand the dance and not just copy her movements. She explained the words and stories of the mele and she got me excited about dances that I didn’t really care for. Aunty Mā‘iki was very generous with her knowledge but she didn’t restrict us. She gave me my foundation in the hula, a foundation that I keep and respect, but she gave us the freedom to go out and create new chants and dances. My ‘ūniki in 1975 was very special because Aunty made the graduation process so demanding. We were disciplined and tested because she wanted us to have strong values and beliefs in the hula and in our lives. She wanted us to find out for ourselves if we really wanted to accept the responsibility of becoming kumu hula. Through the encouragement of my mother and family, I began to teach in Kailua in 1976. I wanted people to understand our culture in the same way that it was presented to me by Aunty Mā‘iki. Hula is one of the few things that you can study in the Hawaiian culture that teaches you every other aspect of Hawaiian life. There is a spiritual strength in hula that I wanted other people to experience because it can in turn strengthen their own lives. There are certain dances like “Kaulilua”, “A Ko‘olau Au”, and “Au‘aia” that are not for everybody. I hold them back because I think of them as ‘ūniki dances. They are the oldest dances that have been shared with me and they have been passed down from generation to generation. These dances are the foundation of my hālau and my training and I will never change the way I was taught them. To create in hula you have to do your homework and open your heart. I think that there are boundaries to creativity and they are based on common sense. If you’re going to create a traditional hula you shouldn’t wind up with a square dance. You have to know your text, you have to feel the magic of the language and you have to be well-versed in hula’s traditional vocabulary of motions. Only then can you conscientiously experiment and innovate. Only then can you explore the art without violating it.
Kent Ghirard A great love for the hula brought Kent Ghirard from the Mainland to Hawaii where he established himself as a kumu hula and choreographer of hula productions. We were the first Hawaiian group to tour Japan, in 1955. We performed in Nichigeki Theatre in Tokyo and the audience was jammed into the hall and they were cheering us like we were The Beatles. We had one singer, four dancers, and myself backed by scores of Japanese girls in cellophane skirts dancing on white tiers that stretched up to the ceiling. I was born in San Francisco, California on September 1, 1918. I was twelve when I first became interested in the hula. My parents came over here on the old Malolo on a regular tourist vacation. Even at that age the minute I saw the hula I loved it. It was the Bray family that I saw and I just took right to it. I bought some old 78 RPM hula records and I even bought a hula skirt. During my college years I learned how to play the ‘“uke” from Hawai‘i students up at Stanford and I learned how to sing from listening to the records. I came over here in 1938 for summer school at the University but it was just an excuse to get over here. In those days the Kodak Hula Show had just started and I was there every week. Every Boat Day I would go down and watch the dancers and listen to the music. That’s when I started to pick things up on my own. The first person who taught me anything was Marguerite Duane who had danced hula professionally on the Mainland and was a very good friend of Hilo Hattie. I was twenty-one at the time and we both were living in San Francisco. So it was through Marguerite that I got my foundation and once I got the basics I just fell into it. I felt it inside, and as long as I could get a translation I could make up the rest because I knew the basic motions. In 1947 I came to Hawai‘i to stay and Marguerite and I took lessons from the Bill Lincoln Studio. At that time Bill Lincoln was the premier writer and singer of hula songs. Everyone was dancing to Bill Lincoln’s songs. My teacher was Alice Keawekane Garner and it is this type of dance that I am carrying on. During that same year I began teaching at the Betty Lei Studio. It was located in Waikiki and movie stars like Shirley Temple would go there to learn hula. Marguerite was living there and helping owner Dorothy Campbell teach hula and I was working in a Waikīkī Hawaiian record store. I would hang around the studio because of Marguerite and I began to sit in on her classes. I began to pick things up, suggest ideas and then help put on her little recitals. After about a year I began to teach groups after hours at the record store when we closed at five o’clock. I never really made any money teaching but I enjoyed it so much. I was interested in putting on a good compact Hawaiian show that was appreciated by a receptive audience. The Kent Ghirard style is the style of the 1930s and 1940s. It is a very simple style that keeps close to the basic steps. When I first saw hula performed I was attracted to the groups that relied on a very simple style. I felt it gave the dancer more of an opportunity to express emotion without being able to rely on the gimmicks of a fast pace and complicated motions. Of course today all of that has been turned upside down. The new kahiko of today is exciting and vital and I’m all for it, but it should be clarified and classified in a category all its own, otherwise what has been passed down from generation to generation and what has been created last month, will become hopelessly muddled. I never had a wealth of knowledge of Hawaiiana. What I brought to the hula was all heart, and a love for the music and dance. I had seen hula at some of the big hotels and I felt there had to be a higher standard for the tourists. I did away with jewelry, inconsistent costume, differing hairstyles, and tried to bring in a more professional style of staging. My greatest thrill still today is to perform in front of Hawaiians and be accepted, although I am Haole. When I hear the old songs of my era played in the old style with a steel guitar and a high-lead voice, it still brings tears to my eyes.
Leinaʻala Kalama Heine Leināʻala Kalama Heine, born and raised in Pālama, O‘ahu, opened her hālau Na Pualei O Likolehua in 1975. She is a featured dancer with the musical group The Brothers Cazimero. Whatever happens from now and hereafter will be looked upon as kahiko in the future. There are those that hang on to the past and there are those who only live in the present. In each case there is no movement because the definitions for each side are very narrow. So it’s stagnant right now. The present and the past have to co-exist with one another if the hula is going to move forward. I don’t think a lot of people who knew me before felt I had the ability or the desire to take on the responsibilities that I have now. I do things today that I never would have done ten years ago. The comic dancer was my role. I was never a straight dancer. I fooled around so much that people wondered about my seriousness. But underneath, the straight dancing was my want. I was a line dancer before I became anything but I could not hold still in a line. I’m one who gets bored fast and I like to make things happen. It was a wonderful feeling to have people laugh with me and at me. It made no difference. Just the fact that people wanted to see more of me was enough. After awhile I started to ask myself where am I going to go from here, so I started to do some straight numbers and people would laugh thinking I was trying to be comical. My interest in hula started when I was enrolled by my mother in classes under Ruby Ahakuelo. I was three years old and Ruby would hold class at the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) right on Fort Street. Back in the early Forties, hula did not have the interest level that it has today so there was no separation between ‘auwana and kahiko. Young kids were enrolled at the YMCA or the Department of Parks and Recreation program. I was then taken to my aunt, Rose Maunakea on Kam IV Road and then to the Alama Sisters (Pua and Lei) with whom I stayed with for quite awhile. At this point I met Joseph Kahaulilio who gave me the incentive for wanting to be something in the hula. In the Forties the hula was not the mainstay of being Hawaiian as it is today so it wasn’t that important to dance the hula. The emphasis at that time was on music and ‘auwana and the teachers were not so concerned about the gestures and steps. It was very relaxed, you just came to learn, picked up an implement, and they taught you a hula. A student just existed in the hula because there was not much knowledge available to students from their kumu. Uncle Joe gave me the incentive to make myself more knowledgeable which led me to Aunty Vickie I‘i Rodrigues. Aunty Mā‘iki Aiu Lake, who is the last kumu I studied under, put all of this together and polished away the rough edges. In 1975 Robert Cazimero asked me to train a few girls for a show, so I began a class made up of fourteen Kamehameha School girls and their friends. Aunty Ma‘iki advised Robert that the boys and girls should be separated and this was how Na Pualei O Likolehua was born. Everyday that I go to the halau, I sit down with my ladies and share my past memories and present experiences so that they can have something to draw from when they dance. Then I have them write up a list of their own experiences because you cannot teach students only on the memories of their kumu. I believe that creativity is important in the traditional hula especially if we expect the young people to be attracted to and have a place in the dance. Uncle Joe and Aunty Vickie always told me that repetitious motions become boring and that no two dances or movements should be alike. When you write a new mele you are writing from the viewpoint of your lifetime; when you lived, when you trained, when you taught. Your boundary is your death and that life span will record and preserve and express your existence. That is exactly what our masters and ancestors did before us and hopefully that’s what will happen with the generations after us. The meles that we write today are going to be the kahiko of the following generations but there has to be limits to creativity as well. Our ancestors have set guidelines for the traditional hula but not everyone follows them. So what we have to work towards is a kahiko that is traditional but also accessible to people who are new to it.
Leimomi Ho Leimomi Ho, a regular dancer with the Kodak Hula Show, has taught hula for the past twenty-three years. I have stayed with Aunty Vickie Iʻi Rodrigues till this day and she has been the one that has made me what I am today. She shares so much with me and I’ve grown to love her like a mom. I’ve become her hands and feet. If someone wants to learn a dance from her, she teaches it to me and I take it from there. It is indeed an honor to be one of the many that have been touched by her work and to be able to share a part of her great knowledge. My grandmother and my parents were involved in the hula on Kaua‘i. When I turned three- years-old, I was taken to Helen Waia‘u and remained with her for six years until we moved to Pauoa in Honolulu. Through our neighbor I was led to my second kumu Sam Kamuela Naeʻole. Sam’s studio was on Nu‘uanu Avenue in a building that they’ve torn down by now. He used to yell at us and we would get so scared but he was a good teacher who was always emphasizing fundamentals. Hālaus back then were known as studios and the ‘ūniki was called a recital. It’s only in the last few years that more teachers and students are using these terms. I stayed with Sam for three years and then I met John Pi‘ilani Watkins. I studied under John for five years and for two summers I worked with him at Jones Beach in New York. We had to learn to work with theater people and it was all big production numbers. Because of all his trips to New York, John Watkins was very modernized. During my second summer in New York, I met Joe Kahaulilio who was a partner of Vickie I‘i Rodrigues and I began to train under them when I returned home. I was grateful for what John had given me but Uncle Joe taught me the hula as it should be. I didn’t like doing production numbers like “Bali Hai” and Uncle Joe and Aunty Vickie started training me in ancient hula, soft ‘auwana numbers, and old Hawaiian songs. I began to teach in the 1960s but in a very off-handed manner. It was a case of people coming to me and asking if I could teach them a certain song. What hula takes from your life is time with your family so I’ve always tried to make the hula secondary. Nowadays the hula is so modernized. So many steps have been added to ancient hula that never existed. So what do you call them? My kumu created motions but they were kept within the kahiko style of dancing. I suppose there has to be change but I come from the “old school” and it’s hard for me to adjust to this change. Mahalo to the Good Lord for giving me my mind, my hands and my feet to be able to carry on my Hawaiian culture as I love it. Mahalo Aunty Vickie for the many years you have shared your knowledge with me.
Marilyn Leimomi Ho Marilyn Leimomi Ho resides in Kuliouou, Oʻahu and currently works for the United States Air Force. She is married to Harry A. Ho, Jr. and teaches in conjunction with her hula sister Jan Yoneda. One thing which Aunty Edith Kanaka‘ole said which has stayed with me is that we are all individuals and when we chant “Kawika” we all sound different even though there is a standard chant style to “Kawika”. And that is all right. I began my training in hula at the age of seven with Aunty Alice Namakelua through the Department of Parks and Recreation program. Classes were held at the Royal School, and Aunty Alice provided me with my basic foundation in the hula. In her method of teaching, students did not use paper and pencil to make notes but only followed Aunty Alice’s verbal instructions and committed movements to memory. At age thirteen 1 moved to Guam where I studied the hula under Mrs. Lillian Aquai. Her training primarily included modern hulas and the use of hula implements. Mrs. Aquai’s hula movements were a little different from those of Aunty Alice’s but her students also were asked to learn totally from memory. After my training with Mrs. Aquai I went on to Edith McKinzie who I still continue to study under and who I suppose is my greatest inspiration. I consider her not only my teacher but a friend. I was trained in both modern and traditional hula along with other Polynesian dances. Aunty Edie had me as a teenager so she would get up and physically show us steps and motions, and she would provide us with written instructions on movement and expression. After graduating from Mrs. McKinzie at eighteen, my family returned to Honolulu. Shortly thereafter I joined the Hālau Hula O Mā‘iki where I studied under Mā‘iki Aiu Lake for the next four years. With Aunty Mā‘iki, she wasn’t satisfied that you just learned the dance; you had to know the meaning of the dance and that meant hours of research. Aunty Mā‘iki could talk to people on their own levels and therefore they conveyed the feeling she wanted when they danced. She gave you a special feeling for every subject you danced. My last two formal teachers were Hoakalei Kamauu and Pele Pūku‘i Suganuma. Hoakalei was teaching through the Model Cities Program and after I gained the consent of Aunty Mā‘iki, I began to train under her. Hoakalei taught me new hula movements, chant styles, meanings of chants, and the use of the pahu and the ipu. She used the old style of training which asked the student to watch, listen, then imitate repeatedly until the dance was executed correctly. Hoakalei was the first kumu to start performing the deep kahiko chants and that’s why I credit her with the great revival of hula kahiko. With the consent of Aunty Hoakalei I began to train under Pele Pūku‘i Suganuma and she became like a mother to me. Aunty Pele was always strict with those that she cared for. I was always in the habit of putting my hands behind my back but in the Hawaiian culture that means that you are ho‘okano, so I was always getting punished because I didn’t know any better. She couldn’t understand why a lot of people asked questions that she thought were so obvious. She tooks things for granted because she was brought up in a Hawaiian atmosphere. She was a woman of her own and very selective of who she opened up to. I began to teach in the early Seventies as an apprentice teacher under Aunty Hoakalei. I worked through the Model Cities Program and the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. I went on to work with my hula sister Jan Kahoku Yoneda in teaching students of Moanalua High School and we eventually formed a hālau which was named Pohai Na Pūa O Laka, by Edith Kanakaʻole. It’s hard to get the elders of the Hawaiian community to share their knowledge because some students use the knowledge out of context. The dance has become a very modernistic expression and its appeal is to a young modern audience. Most students still exhibit a great deal of respect for the hula and to their kumu but with the influx of all the different races into Hawai‘i, the kahiko is not purely Hawaiian anymore. I see teachers like Frank Hewett and Bobby Cazimero having the most impact on young people and that will fashion the kahiko of tomorrow.
Eleanor Hiram Hoke The late Eleanor Hiram Hoke was the third child of Moses Kealoha Hiram who in the 1920s held the konohiki fishing rights for Lāʻie, O‘ahu. She was considered at the time of her death in 1983 one of the last remaining hula kapu students of Hawaiʻi. I was taken at birth by my grandmother Katherine Keakaokalā Kanahele to be the chosen one for the hula kapu. I was reared in the area of Marconi Wireless Station in Kahuku, and it was there that I received my hula kapu training until age eight. To prepare for my training, Tūtūkane and Tūtūwahine went to the mountains and picked certain greens. A room within their home was set aside that no one could enter. Within this room the greens were hung without water on chicken wire upon a kuahu. On the day that I was born Tūtūkane selected a black pig and brought it to the kuahu. Tūtūwahine would begin to chant and slowly the animal would grow drowsier and drowsier. The pig would fall into a deep sleep and in its sleep it would pass away. A weapon could not be used to kill this sacrifice. Accompanied by a chant I was given a taste of certain portions of the animal: the brain, the front legs for my hands, and the back legs for my feet. This ‘ailolo prepared my body for the training to come. Absolutely none of the hulas or chants were put down in writing so the ‘ailolo served to heighten my senses and sharpen my memory. Whatever was not consumed was wrapped in greens and taken to the ocean. For eight years all I did was live the hula. Hawaiian chants were chanted to me like nursery rhymes are sung to other children. Throughout the day and the night all I did was practice and study chants. A hula kapu student has to be chosen before birth. I could not be touched by unclean hands and my meals had to be prepared at the kuahu in the halau by Tūtūwahine alone. The mullet that I ate had to come from a pond in Marconi Wireless and not from the ocean. The pigs that were fed to me could not be fed swill but only the best of grain. They also had to be spotlessly clean so they were raised in a cement pond by Tūtūkane. When I came of age I was taken to school. I was not allowed to share any part of my lunch with my friends nor was I allowed to exchange any food. Because of my kapu training I was not allowed to play with the neighborhood children. If I had a cold and went outside I had to carry a ti leaf with me. I was told to spit only in the ti leaf and then to come home and have Tūtūwahine dispose of it. At the age of eight, a child knows right from wrong and the kapu is ‘oki. The day before my ‘ūniki, Tūtūwahine graduated me in front of the kuahu. All that I had learned I performed before the kuahu. I took a vow in front of the kuahu that I would never again practice the kapu rituals that I had learned. Accompanied by a chant, the kuahu was taken down, wrapped in dried mats along with my ipu, ‘uli ‘uli, and costumes, and taken to Makapu‘u. Tūtūwahine went down to the beach and began to chant. The ocean was very calm and suddenly one wave appeared. Tūtūkane threw the kuahu greens and implements into the wave and it all disappeared. At the point of the cliff near the ocean, two ladies appeared in kikepas, one in red, one in yellow. This sign meant that I was accepted from Tūtūwahine and from that hour on the kapu was ‘oki. Tūtūwahine and her assistant Luika Pele Kaio were students of Niuola‘a and Kamawae so the next day every well-known teacher in Hawai‘i came to see what Tūtū had passed on through me. Among them were ‘Īlālā‘ole, Ka‘ō‘ō and every well-known kumu of that time. The year was 1926 and I was the last hula kapu student to be graduated from Tūtū Keaka. After my ‘ūniki I entertained with Tūtū at Hawaiian Town and at the military clubs around the island. At nineteen I stepped aside and began to train students but I have discontinued my hula for a long time now. The hula kahiko that was taught during my time is dying away now. People cannot recognize what is authentic or newly created in the hula anymore. I will not perform my hula ‘ilio or hula kupe because I’m afraid of what people will do to it. People don’t understand it anymore. I performed it in front of elderly Hawaiians who had never seen hula ‘ilio before. This hula is the sacred temple dance of the dog and the people laughed and called it crazy hula. The reason my knowledge of the hula has survived is the hula kapu. Nothing was written down but yet I can remember every mele, every hula motion, every chant that I learned at the kuahu.
Rose Kapulani Joshua Rose Joshua established the Magic Hula Studio in 1947 and continues to teach modern and traditional hula in Waikiki. My parents on occasion danced at parties and special events. I loved to watch the expressions on their faces as they danced. That’s what first inspired me about the hula. I started my training under Esther Paulson in 1937. There was no such thing as a hālau back then. Esther would have to come to my home and she would train me in hula ‘auwana. In 1939 I moved on and began to train under Tom Hiona and it marked the beginning of an eight-year education. Three times a week I would go to Tom’s house on Queen Emma Street and for three hours he would train us in hula kahiko. A haumāna would begin with the fundamental steps until Tom was satisfied with her progress. Then he would introduce a particular mele which the student would practice until Tom again gave his approval. Finally, the student was allowed to rise and learn the corresponding dance step. The training was a slow, painstaking process. You didn’t move on to the next level until he was satisfied. Tom demanded a great deal but the result was the blessing of a solid foundation. The practice of my kumu was to first feel the manao of the story and then to translate those emotions through the dance. Once I was having trouble with the mele of the hula ‘auwana “Mi Nei”. I knew all the steps but there was something missing in my movements. My mother took me aside and began to tell me an old story. She spoke of two sisters who were deeply in love with a great prince. One sister she explained, was a great beauty and the other was very plain. Now the grandmother of these two girls felt very sorry for the plain sister. She decided to teach the girl a very beautiful and magical dance that would win over the handsome prince. The prince fell in love with the plain sister and this was the story of “Mi Nei”. Because of that very special moment between my mother and I, “Mi Nei” became my most favorite hula ‘auwana. In 1947 I began to teach. I simply had reached a point where I felt I could go out on my own so I began a career which I’ve come to love dearly. There is nothing more uplifting than to see my haumāna going out into the community and passing on the style of hula that was handed down to them. I have always tried to be respectful and faithful to the style of hula that was passed down to me by my kumu. It has been a life of great joy because I have had the blessing of being able to work at what I love.
Lorraine Joshua Daniels and Blossom Joshua Kunewa
Lorraine Joshua Daniels Lorraine Daniels, daughter of Rose Joshua, teaches with her mother at the Magic Hula Studio in Waikiki. She has recently returned from coordinating a Polynesian show for the Maunaloa Restaurant in Cancun, Mexico. Because my mother and father were entertainers our life as we were growing up was always filled with music and hula. My mother danced in a hula troupe with Sally Wood Nālua‘i and Helen Fuller, and their dancing inspired me and left a lasting impression on me. We used to have parties on the beach and whenever the music would play I would just get up and dance. I was trained first by my mother but she wanted her children to have a broad education in the hula so my first kumu outside the family was Mrs. Ku‘ulei Clark. I graduated traditionally with Mrs. Clark and then I was taken to Aunty Louise Akeo and then to Mrs. Po‘omaikai who is better known as Hannah Ho. During that time the only hula that was taught was ‘auwana complemented by very simple kahiko lessons. When it came time to ‘ūniki from Mrs. Po‘omaikai we were told to go out into the sea and she would accompany our walk with an oli. My dad was deeply Christian and he refused to let us delve into any kapu hula or kapu chant so I was not allowed to participate in the ‘ūniki ceremony. The last kumu who I formally trained under was Henry Pa who gave me my foundation in ancient hula. He inspired me to better myself as a student and I found him to be a very strict teacher with a great deal of warmth for his haumāna. In the 1930s I began to dance more actively with my father’s group, The Moana Entertainers. We performed abroad, on the Mainland, and at Honolulu showplaces such as the Waikīkī Sands, Lau Yee Chai, and the Princess Theatre. In time people began to approach me and ask if I could teach them and that is how my teaching career began. I taught at my mothers home and I learned that a kumu has to go into teaching with her whole being. You have to discipline yourself and your lifestyle if you expect to keep your health and teach well. My mother has had the greatest influence on me and she continues to be my mentor today. She sent me to various kumu but actually all of them had a similar style of dancing. The traditional hula was always done flat-footed with simple, unadorned hand motions. Many people nowadays seem to prefer a traditional hula that shifts toward Western styles of dancing and this has turned the dance into a series of poses rather than a dance which flows with hula movement. In the end the responsibility of these changes lie with the kumu of today’s new teachers. The dancers and teachers of today are only reflecting the teaching and ideas of their kumu. I consider myself contemporary and traditional at the same time because I allow for creativity within the framework of the ancient hula. I think it’s so important to know the language because it is the key to the Hawaiian culture. If you know the language then you can find out the interpretation of the chant and understand the meaning and logic of what you are dancing about. The language is the key to controlling creativity within the traditional hula framework. Blossom Joshua Kunewa Blossom Kunewa, daughter of Rose and Isaac Kahele Joshua whose Moana Entertainers helped popularize Hawaiian music in the 1930s and '40s, has brought hula to the four corners of the world. During the war we must have played every foxhole on the island from the mountains down to the sea. At Red Hill my father announced that regardless of a plane or gas attack the show would go on, and as we danced we donned our gas masks. The soldiers threw their hats in the air and applauded. Back in the 1930s my dad had a group of his own called the Moana Entertainers. Every weekend Princess Theatre used to have their “Potluck Show” and my father would be called upon to perform. I first performed with my father at age six and was trained right along as I grew up. My mother, who choreographed our hula shows, gave me my foundation in the hula. She trained my sister Lorraine and I in ‘auwana and simple kahiko. At the age of nine, I was enrolled in hula classes under Mrs. Mary Ho for one year and later studied under Tom Hiona at our home for a year and a half. After Tom Hiona I studied under Henry Pa who became a partner in the hula studio with my mother. I acknowledge Tom Hiona and Henry Pa and my mother for my hula kahiko training. I went through a modern ‘ūniki with my mother and Mary Ho, and I began to teach hula in 1956 under my mother. I tried to teach my girls to perform with grace and to keep it as Hawaiian as possible. You have to know precisely what you are doing because in the “real world” you sometimes have to compromise and give the audience what they want. If you don’t know what you’re doing you’re going to lose the Hawaiianess of the dance altogether. Up until World War II most of the jobs available were informal and casual. But when the war came everything changed. Everything was restricted to the military and we would work at the USO (United Service Organization) and go to high school at the same time. My dad got together with the Ah See family and we would entertain at the Little Theatre down at Schofield. It was the hottest place to entertain because it was always filled with generals and the top brass. During the war years military clubs were the big outlets where people performed and entertained. Back then modern hula was popular. People of those times weren’t interested in the past, they were interested in what was new, what was modern. So they had no interest in the traditional. After the war we began to perform in Waikiki. We were featured performers at some of the better known establishments beginning with Elmer Lee’s Waikīkī Tavern, the Waikīkī Lau Yee Chai, and the Hawai‘i Village. We’d put on five, forty- minute shows a night at three different showcases. My mother would be waiting at the stage door with the motor running to shuttle us back and forth. We ended up changing our costumes as we drove, fixing our make-up at stop signs and stoplights. I began teaching hula in 1959 in the Manana Housing in the Pearl City area of O‘ahu. In 1963 my husband, who was in the military at that time, was transferred to a base in Frankfurt, Germany. I accompanied him and continued teaching hula in Germany. I produced a Polynesian show with students enrolled in my classes which toured almost all of Europe. In 19691 returned to Hawai‘i and helped my mother teach in her studio. I also served as a hula teacher for the Department of Education adult education program on O‘ahu. Today I am still with mom’s studio, and I also give private hula instruction. In the last six years there seems to be so many kumu all of a sudden. It’s like a free-for-all. During our time we knew all the kumu and whoever was studying under them. It was unheard of for someone to take a few lessons then rise and call him or herself a kumu hula.
Nā Kumu Hula Cecelia Kuamo‘o Ka‘ai - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 10
Cecelia Kuamo‘o Ka‘ai Born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi until the age of eighteen, “Cissy” Ka‘ai has taught the hula on Kaua‘i for the past thirteen years. I was interested in the hula when I was a little girl growing up in Opihikao on the Big Island. There would be family parties every Saturday afternoon in church halls, pavilions, and any other area where tents could be erected. We children would help serve the food and afterwards everyone would call for entertainment. I didn’t know anything about the hula but my friend and I would make up motions to the songs the musicians played. I came from a large family which spoke fluent Hawaiian and although my aunty Rose Kuamoʻo was a well-known hula instructor, I did not have the benefit of training under her since she lived in Hilo. When I turned twelve, however, she asked my father if she could give me lessons. He agreed and a bargain was struck between them. He would supply her with the ti leaves she needed to entertain and she would give my sister and I hula lessons. Every Saturday my father would drive us to Hilo in his car for our three-hour lesson with Aunty Rose where we would be trained in both ‘auwana and kahiko. During high school in Hilo I studied informally with George Nā‘ope and Martha Kaʻiawe and upon graduation I moved to 0‘ahu to attend Church College in Lā‘ie. I took a few lessons with Pi‘ilani Watkins in Kapahulu when I first arrived but before long I was more interested in Polynesian dances other than hula. While attending Church College I met my future husband Nelson Ka‘ai whom I married after graduation. We lived in Kaneohe until shortly after our daughter was born and then we moved to Kauaʻi. On Kaua‘i we became active with the Kaumualiʻi Civic Club and eventually they asked me to dance at club functions. Prior to that time my husband did not approve of me dancing in public but he encouraged me to dance and my interest in hula was renewed. I met Uncle Joe Kahaulilio who had also moved from Honolulu to Kaua‘i and at this time he was already a popular kumu hula. Unlike some teachers who did not seem to care whether the hula was learned correctly, Uncle Joe would tell you the meaning of the song, why you were dancing it, why you were doing each motion, and he would watch everything you did to be sure it was proper. I studied under Uncle Joe until he moved to California and I consider him the greatest influence in my career. I began to teach under Hoakalei Kamauʻu and the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts in the 1970s. She trained us and then sent us out into the different districts of Kauaʻi to teach. I wanted people to see the way Hawaiians told their stories, and that it was all in the hula.
John W. Keanuenue Ka‘imikaua
John W. Keānuenue Kaʻimikaua John Kaʻimikaua began to formally teach in 1977 with the establishment of Hālau Hula O Kukunaokalā. I was but a very young boy of fourteen years standing six feet tall when I first met my benefactor of Hawaiian knowledge. Her name was Kawahinekapuheleikapōkāne and she was ninety-two-years- old. She stood erect and tall, six feet four inches to my six feet, like a young woman in an old womans body. She asked if I was interested in my Hawaiian culture to which I answered in the affirmative. She told me she had in her possession a compiled record of hulas, chants, and stories of our Hawaiian people and no one in her family was interested in learning them. She then told me she had been waiting and praying for a very long time for someone to come so that she could teach and pass on this knowledge. But each year passed and no one approached and she thought the knowledge she possessed would die with her. The woman was extremely well-preserved. She had short, white hair, a rather dark complexion, and very dark, piercing eyes which made one feel as though she were looking into the very depths of your soul and comprehending everything about you. Her voice was captivating, and when she chanted in the oli fashion she didn’t have to tell me what the oli was about for her voice tones were made to sound like the waves washing over the sand or airy like the winds above a cliff or whispery like the soft rustling leaves. She made me feel as though I were a part of the very essence of nature itself. To me, I was the earth, the wind, the seas, and the skies. For two years I met with her at her home everyday after school. She taught me well and I was fortunate to be able to absorb all she had to teach me in the very short time we had. In 1975 at the end of my junior year in high school she passed away. I never knew if she had an English name or even what her family name was. I never knew if she had any family because when I visited with her she was always alone. All I have left to remind me that she lived are these chants, hulas, and stories from Molokaʻi and a genealogy of my line of kumu hula ending with her. During my time of study with her, Kawahine explained the genealogy and told me of the descendency of my line of kumu hula which reverts all the way back to Laka and five more generations beyond her. She further explained that for every two kumus on the genealogy chart, the time span marks a hundred years. With the genealogy I possess; the chants, hulas, stories, and historical records she shared with me would date back to 900 A.D. Each kumu in the genealogy kept a record of what transpired during their lifetime. They recorded the births and deaths of ali‘is, chiefs, and other notable people in Hawaiian history. They recorded events, wars, and life-styles of the people. They wrote of the foods planted, the animals in abundance, the work labored and the changes in the land. All this and more was recorded in the chants and stories left me by my benefactor, all written in Hawaiian, some translated to English. One of the most significant treasures of information which Kawahine imparted to me was the knowledge that the race of people the Hawaiians descended from, once had an ancient written language that long prevailed in their record keeping and everyday communication. It consisted of symbols representing nouns and verbs, and read from top to bottom. The sentence structure was ordered from right to left. This written language was taught to each kumu in the genealogy line as a means to preserve this art, for the language soon disappeared from the people because of a lack of use as the life-styles of the people changed. The stories and beliefs of the early Hawaiians regarding extraordinary animals, people, and events were based on realistic happenings and factual accounts. Today they are regarded as myths and legends. For example through the chants, it relates how Molokaʻi at one time was over-run by huge mo‘o or lizards. The kumus recorded these lizards to be the size of mountain ridges. These creatures had an almost human-like intelligence and had the ability to communicate with man. Another aspect recorded in the chants tells of giants who once lived and thrived on the land. The events that are recorded in some of these chants are unbelievable but then our world today would be just as unbelievable to other people in the past or in the future. The combined land area of all eight Hawaiian Islands today are but a tenth of what the lands of Hawaiʻi once were. The extent of the land at one time was so great that it supported a population of millions of inhabitants. There were no separate islands per se but all were connected. The separation of this land occurred through mass destruction generated by earthquakes and other natural occurrences which resulted in the sinking of nine- tenths of the land and much of the inhabitants into the ocean. But I turn my thoughts to Molokaʻi again and relate the significant aspect of this epistle. It was on this island of Moloka'i that Laka was born and taught the hula by her older sister Kapoulakīnaʻu. At that time only the family of Laka possessed the knowledge and artistic skills of the hula and it was retained and taught only to the members of her family. It was only after Laka attained this knowledge and art that she spread this art form to every island. First to Ni'ihau, then Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Maui, Lānaʻi, and lastly to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Wherever she traveled, academies of dance were started and the traditions were carried forth by her ardent students. When age crept upon her, Laka returned to Molokaʻi where she spent her remaining years enmeshed in her dance and died in the place called Kaʻana. What is sorely missing in the ancient hula today is the purity of spirit within each individual kumu and dancer. Ancient hula is spiritual. When we perform we are indeed re-enacting the past life of our forefathers, and we must be clean from the inside-out in order to spiritually satisfy and represent the hula according to tradition. The hula was held sacred and was a means of expressing the life-styles and culture of our forefathers. It was not entertainment but their way of communicating effectively. Our whole Hawaiian culture: its lifestyles, government, temple ceremonies, genealogy, and interests were preserved in these chants. When Kawahine gave me her knowledge, she did so with these words which long have remained imprinted upon my mind. She said, ‘I give you all that I have which is pure and true and all that now remains, for this knowledge of sacred records once flourished like a tree with many branches from Kaʻana and extended far into the corners of our lands. But eventually the branches withered and died and only the aged trunk remained. My predecessors foretold of this breaking away and so we (the kumus) have carefully guarded and nurtured the trunk of this tree. This I give to you. The true knowledge of our Hawaiian people.’ The hula is the inspiration that will enable the Hawaiians to rise up from the dust out of obscurity. It is the last hope that can make us feel Hawaiian and remember our culture and forefathers. The dance will thus be the last of our cultural strongholds that may well preserve our dying heritage.
Ka‘aiikawaha Kekau‘ilani Kalama
Ka‘aiikawaha Kekauʻilani Kalama Lani Kalama, cousin of Māiki Aiu Lake, serves as a hula consultant for various hula halaus throughout Hawaii. She currently resides in Kailua, O‘ahu. When I was fifteen-years-old, my friend Nellie Wong told me she had heard of a lady named Lokalia Montgomery who was teaching the hula pahu in Kapahulu. My yearning to further my knowledge in the hula prompted me to pay fourteen dollars to learn which was a lot of money in those days. I didn’t dare ask my grandmother because I was sure she wouldn’t let me, so I broke my piggy bank and I took that money to Lokalia to pay for my lessons. My formal hula training actually began at the age of seven under Tūtū Keaka Kanahele and Gertrude Makini at Aunty Gertrudes home on Rose Street. The class was made up of all the neighborhood children and the kids in my family. The Makinis’ had a big yard and a large home and we would move all the chairs in the living room, and that’s where we would dance. We would go to class everyday and if Tūtū felt like it we were there for hours. If she was tired the class would be cancelled for three or four days. I graduated traditionally with Aunty Gertrude and then I went on to Harriet Kepelino Fernandez who trained me in hula ‘auwana. I went through the hula kapu training with Aunty Harriet but when it came time to perform the rituals myself my grandmother stopped me. I am especially grateful to my grandmother Helen Pamaiēulu Ha‘o Correa who exposed me to the hula at a very tender age. She made me aware of the mannerisms and protocol of the hula because back then the definition of hula ‘auwana meant hula that was free of any ritual ceremony or kapu and had nothing to do with creativity or musical accompaniment. I graduated traditionally from Aunty Harriet at fourteen but I wanted to study more of the hula pahu and that is how I was led to Lokalia Montgomery. In Lokalia’s dining room she had a great dinner table where she would talk with her guests. Beautiful Hawaiian ladies such as Kawena Pūku‘i, Malia Kau, and Vickie I‘i would drop in throughout the day to “talk story” and we would be in the dancing area which was separated by a sliding door waiting to learn. One day I decided to be the teacher and I had the girls dance as I chanted and beat the drum. She returned sooner than I expected and she told me from that day on I would have to learn both the chant and the dance. One night there was a chant I really wanted to learn so I sat in my room in the dark and beat my pahu softly and chanted to myself. After awhile I got so involved I began pounding my drum and chanting full-voice. Before I knew it the door was open and my grandmother was standing there. Up until that evening no one in my family had any idea I was learning the hula pahu and I thought that was it for me. I told her about the piggy bank and Lokalia and she began to cry. She told me that her father had proclaimed that their future lay in the Christian world. No one was encouraged to go into the Hawaiian culture. But he prophesied that despite all this suppression, one of his descendants would come out of it and I turned out to be the one. I was sixteen at the time and my grandmother said she wanted to meet this Lokalia. Under Lokalia we were never allowed to write anything. We never received a copy of a translation; she just taught and we just listened. Her descriptions and translations were all in-tune with nature. Lokalia said her mentor was Kawena Pūku‘i and there were no teaching differences between Keaka Kanahele and Lokalia so I consider my hula kahiko to be a continuation of the Keaka Kanahele-Kawena Pūku‘i- Lokalia Montgomery line. In preparation for our ‘ūniki our last practice was held at midnight before the next day’s ceremony. Sally Wood Nālua‘i was married and so she was permitted to go home but the rest of us had to spend the night at Lokalia’s home. All of our implements were made by Timothy Montgomery, Lokalia’s husband, and our clothing was made by Lokalia. On the day of the ‘ūniki we had a little pā‘ina in the living room which was followed by a public ceremony to which all of our friends and relatives were invited. I began to teach the hula in 1948 in the parish hall of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Pauoa as a means of adding to my family’s livelihood. I was married and I was starting a family and 1 taught the parishioners of the Church. Through the years I have kept myself involved with the hula but always my first obligation was to my family and my husband Charles Kalama. I consider myself a contemporary hula teacher and not a kumu hula. I think the word kumu is used too loosely today. I’m only a branch of the tree. My teachers were the real kumu. To be a real teacher you cannot have two lives. You cannot be married or have a family because your life has to be dedicated to your students. I am grateful to many people who shared their knowledge with me. My mama Hoakalei deFries had patience with me, Pilahi Paki gave me a foundation in the Hawaiian language, and Gertrude Makini and Harriet Kepelino gave me my training in hula ‘auwana. Someone told me that people have to express their creativity and you have to have modern thinking today. But I feel we have to remember the past. That doesn’t mean we remain in the past but without our traditional ways we have no foundation. The question that is repeatedly asked today is how do we know what is traditional? There are a few people who lived during those times and were taught by the hula masters of yesterday. I am asking the kumu hula of today to have faith and a belief in them.
Robert Kalani Robert Kalani began his hula training under Henry Pa at the age of eleven. Born in Paia, Maui, he has taught the hula for twenty-six years in Lahaina, Paia, Kula, andKahului. When I went to learn the chants from my kumu, my mother was against it. My grandmother had been a kahuna and my mother didn’t want me involved in the old ways. My grandmother lived in Makena and when she walked along the streets, the neighbors would get so afraid of her. She would constantly oli until one o’clock in the morning and my mother didn’t want to see that happen again with me. When I was eleven, I visited Honolulu during the summer months and I would stay with my aunt. Henry Pa would come over and use her house for hula rehearsals. This is how I got into dancing. Every summer I would learn new and different dances under Henry Pa. His classes would last for three hours. I studied for three summers under Henry Pa and then I stayed back on Maui and went to Rena Ching for six months. 1 graduated from Rena Ching and went through a modern ʻūniki with her. After Rena, I decided to go back to Honolulu and that’s when I met Hattie Au and Tom Hiona. My aunt was being trained by Hattie for nine months and this was how I was taken into the hālau and taught the kuahu dances. I studied under Hattie for nine months and then I was led to Tom Hiona who has been the greatest influence on my career. Tom had the ability to teach and to find the right English word for Hawaiian ideas. This was back in the early Fifties and Tom would not teach us at a studio but at a private home that we would go to on the weekends. We were trained in the different styles of traditional dance, and the different beats of the ipu heke and pahu. I spent three summers with Tom Hiona and I found him to be a very sensitive and demanding man. I began to teach when I was attending high school. Some of the students wanted to learn, so I would have my mother translate songs for me and that’s how I started. My kumu taught me that what you want to explain to the audience through the hula comes from deep within you so you must show that in your expressions.
Luka Kaleikī Born and raised in Papakōlea, Luka Kaleikī became interested in the hula at the age of eight. She began to teach at a hula studio owned by her sister Louise Kaleikī at the age of fifteen. We Hawaiians have a culture but we don’t protect it. We would rather modernize. That’s why I admire Joseph ʻĪlālā‘ole, Manuel Silva, and Henry Pa. They had an element that you don’t see nowadays. They were very devoted to the hula and not to the audience. I was always on the big side and I was ashamed of that so I never was interested in learning from the kumu hula that were in my family. I think that’s the one thing I regret in my life. My first teacher was Dorothy Ortiz and I was trained in modern hula. She was a friend of my sister Louise and together they had opened a studio in Papakōlea in 1959. When they moved their classes to the old George Nā‘ope studio in Kalihi, my sister asked me to help with the teaching load. My sister had been left a book of hulas and I studied the book like people study to go to school. The classes would come, I would put on the record, and that’s how we would start. My first idol was Joseph Kahaulilio but his classes were few so I learned my basic steps for ancient hula from Manuel Silva. When I turned seventeen, I went to Henry Pa and he became the greatest influence on my hula. Henry’s teachers included Katie Nākaula, Keaka Kanahele, Joseph ‘Īlālā‘ole, Akoni Mika, and Kauluwai Maka Palea. Whenever I needed an ancient number for a big show, I would go to Uncle Henry and in 1962 he graduated me as one of his students. When I was in high school, I was studying to become an opera singer. I took classes at the University of Hawai‘i but I stopped when my sister needed help with her hula studio. Once Istarted teaching I never felt the need to go into anything else. Hula has been my sole support. I simply enjoy the teaching aspect of working with a student and watching that student grow and mature as a person and as a dancer. I think it’s important to take kids who may not be the best dancers and give them the opportunity to dance at big competitions like the Merrie Monarch. The opportunity to travel and to get up on stage and prove they are something is important. I do not consider myself a kumu hula but a hula instructor because I didn’t go through the rituals. My life in the hula has been a gift from God, I took one year of formal training under my sister and she had no teacher, only the book of hula motions that had been left to her.
Hoakalei Kamau‘u Hoakalei Kamauʻu is the niece of the late ‘Iolani Luahine and served as her ho‘opa‘a and alakaʻi for the last fifteen years of her life. In the beginning I wanted to be a nurse but once I got started in the hula that was it. I danced informally with the USO (United Service Organization) during the war but it wasn’t until 1943 when I first came to Honolulu that I really began to be trained in the hula. My first kumu hula was Emma Moniz Bishop. Her studio used to be on Pensacola and King Street and coming from a background of informal training she seemed very strict. She wanted you to learn and really be someone. She was a great influence on me because she gave me a desire for learning from the first day. She made me realize there was a right way of learning the hula and she was satisfied with nothing less. I learned modern hula and a little kahiko under Emma. Because it was during the war a class would graduate every six months. My mother and the rest of my family lived in the studio and our job was to take care of the building. I stayed with Aunty Emma for three years and then I moved to Kaka‘ako and lived with my aunt ‘Iolani Luahine on Ilaniwai Street. It was Kawena Puku‘i that told ‘Iolani to train someone within her family to carry on her knowledge and that’s how she started to train me. Aunty ‘Iolani was my greatest influence because she was able to make me see the values that are in the dance and not just the dancer. She put a tremendous emphasis on fundamentals. She felt unless you had a solid foundation you couldn’t grow so we spent the first three months learning only fundamentals. Many people think I was trained by her to only be her chanter but I had to learn all of her dances as well. With Aunty Emma everyone looked forward to the graduations and receiving her certificate of instruction was a great joy for me. But with ‘Iolani there were no degrees, no certificates. It was a continued learning experience. Today the paper is very important but with ‘Iolani it was what you knew and what you could do. ‘Iolani would hold classes right in her home in Kaka‘ako until she opened her studio on Queen Street between Kalani and Ward Avenue. Her studio was upstairs and this was where I began to teach. In 1969 I opened my hālau and I was asked by Alfred Preis of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts to be the Dance Coordinator for Hawai‘i. Many people felt at that time that ancient hula was kapu and you weren’t supposed to do it. So people were frightened by it more than anything else. ‘Iolani made us enjoy the ancient dances and she never said don’t do this or that. My job was to go around and find some of the old-time kumu hula to share what they knew because there were so many hula teachers that wanted to learn. In addition the State Foundation funded another program that was administered by the Waiʻanae Coast and Kalihi-Pālama Culture and Arts agencies that trained hula instructors in the ancient hula so that they in turn could go out and teach it better. In 1969 hardly anybody was doing the ancient hulas and I give Mr. Preis credit because he foresaw the need for this. ‘Iolani learned and was trained in the old ways but she never said I have to go back to the old ways. She taught it to us, she told us about it, we learned and appreciated it but we have to live in the present. She said you live in the present but respect what was done in the past. I feel however that we are creating something new that is not keeping to the traditions and fundamentals of ancient hula but we are still calling it traditional hula. I think there should be a limit to creativity in ancient hula. When I choreograph a kahiko dance I choreograph in the style that I have learned. I was taught by ‘Iolani that the ipu and pahu always complemented ancient dancing and the ‘auwana was always accompanied by music. Modern hula could describe practically anything but the kahiko was much more secular and disciplined in its movement. The ancient hula was regimented in its movement but not to the point where it was stiff while the ‘auwana was free-flowing and full of personality. We Hawaiians are blurring these boundaries and modifying basic motions with movement altogether foreign. I realize that there are many different schools of thought reflecting the hula of different islands but there is a basic set of fundamentals shared by all. Traveling around the Pacific I’ve seen the different dances and we must keep our dance unique and individual from the others. We have so much at hand and so much to do if we just be Hawaiian and not try to be something else. Perhaps the ancient hula of today will be called traditional fifty years from now but what’s going to happen to the authenticity of our culture, of our traditions?
Elaine Kaʻōpūiki Elaine Kaʻ ōpūiki has devoted over 30 years to teaching hula on the island of Lanaʻi. I live on an island that is so isolated that I hardly see things that would change my style. Thirty years ago, anytime we needed instruction we would fly to Honolulu. Flights weren’t expensive like they are today. I would spend a weekend in Honolulu and I would go to any instructor that was available. The kumu would give you translations of chants and you would learn them on your own time. In those days, you learned by the hour so you had to take as many chants as you could in an hour. We didn’t have tape recorders so a lot of knowledge had to be jotted down or sung so I wouldn’t forget. I was trained under such kumu hula as Leilani Alama, Luka Kaleikī, and Noelani Māhoe but the instructors that I saw the most were ‘Iolani Luahine and Tom Hiona. My greatest honor was to be able to learn and dance under these great masters. I began to teach both kahiko and ‘auwana on Lāna‘i because we didn't have a teacher in the hula. I was an entertainer and I felt I could do it. In those days the requirements to teach were up to the individual herself. There were no requirements that I knew of so I just did it on my own. There are seven steps to my kahiko and the dance is very simple. I don’t need the fancy steps. What I do need is expressive hands, bodies, and eyes because the traditional dance compared to the ‘auwana has almost no movement.
Kaulana Kasparovitch Originally trained in fine arts and classical music, Kaulana Kasparovitch established the Lehua Dance Company and has taught the hula for the past eight years in Honolulu. We are close to a point of saturation in the hula right now unless there is something new that arises to keep the next generation interested. In any culture you will have peaks and valleys. In the next three to five years the interest in the culture will level off and possibly turn downward. Other things will arise because today Hawaiʻi is cosmopolitan. My grandmother Minnie Liliaokalani Wilhem Jones was the one that saw to it that I was introduced to Hawaiian music and dance. She introduced me to a lovely lady named Emily Thomas who had an ‘ohana group that were all friends of my grandmother and this was how I started. My first kumu was Manuel Silva who was a member of this group and he taught my cousin and I to chant for three years until he passed away. I was being taught Hawaiian music at this time by Aunty Pauline Kekahuna and in 1971 her dancers decided to retire from the Hau’oli group. Aunty Pauline and one of her musicians decided to open a hālau under the Hau‘oli name and this is how I came to dance under Leilani Mendez. In ancient Hawai‘i people lived the hula, but the hula today is entertainment and a leisure-time activity. What Leilani taught me was that I really had to work hard at the hula to be good. She disciplined my attitude toward work and hula. We had to be good because we had to do shows and there wasn’t a margin for sloppiness on stage. I went on to train under Uncle Henry Pa at a class he opened at Kamehameha Schools for the Kamehameha Hawaiian Civic Club. I admired Uncle Henry because there was such a joy in all of his hula and even in his kahiko. What he gave me was the essence to create. He would sit us down and say this is the mele in Hawaiian, this is the mele in English, now create your own motions and we will pick the best motions from the class. His alakaʻi Pa Mai invited me to study with them and I ended up staying for one and a half years. I went on to take hula workshops under Eleanor Hiram Hoke, and Edith Kanaka’ole and her daughters but I consider the Hau‘oli style of dancing to be the most influential factor in my dance style. Watching Vickie Iʻi Rodrigues, Lei Mendez, and Sally Wood Nāluaʻi as they taught and danced provided me with a foundation for the boundaries and protocol of the hula. If there is any question that I have about the hula or a chant that I need they are always there to help. What I’ve done in fact is take five different hula styles that I was taught and taken what I feel is the best from each to create my own style. The trademark of the Hauʻoli group was beautiful line dancing full of expression and heart. My goal became to bring back as much as possible the expression and love in a dancer’s face and movement so that a haumāna can dance in place and emulate through the face and heart the entire dance. That is a dancer. Anybody can perform or teach technique but to draw an audience into the emotions of the dance is something else. I began to teach in 1975 as a hula instructor for the Department of Parks and Recreation. This was one of my most difficult periods because I had no teaching style and I was working with students who looked upon the class as recess. I had to develop personal teaching habits such as how much should I balance strictness with gentleness. I learned that a student shouldn’t ever consider taking hula if he or she doesn’t have the desire to learn and respect it. Popularity and commerciality are not the reasons to learn the hula because you end up wasting everyone’s time. In 1969 Hawaiian music was contemporized by Peter Moon, and Robert and Roland Cazimero. I think this had a great influence on getting our young people interested in their music and dance. It helped to reawaken the Hawaiian in me. I am only one-eighth Hawaiian but once I got into the culture I was just taken over. I saw that the purpose of the hula and the music was to retain the culture from one generation to the next and I wanted to be a part of that.
Pearl Keawe Pearl Keawe has taught the hula in Hawaiʻi for thirty-three years and her hula studio is presently located in the Kalihi Valley area of O‘ahu. I became interested in the hula through my late sister-in-law Caroline Tuck, a renown Hawaiian entertainer and hula instructor. She performed throughout Hawai‘i with Alice Keawekāne Garner and Frances Palama. Carolines studio was located on Pu‘uhale Street and I began to train under her in 1927 when I was twenty-three years old. I was taught modern hula by Caroline and her style of hula was to always bend low in your motion and dance from your heart. I also received private instruction in the art of ancient hula from Mrs. Lily Polani, a student of Mr. Ka‘ō‘ō. Her classes were held at her home in Kāne‘ohe and lasted approximately three hours. The first thing I learned from Mama Lily was that you should never walk over a hula implement that had been placed on the ground. Everything in the hula world has a certain dignity to it and this world must be respected. She would pah and teach us the lyrics of the mele pausing occasionally to talk and tell us the story relating to the mele. After three or four days we began to learn the dance itself. This is how I learned the traditional dances of the grand hula master Mr. Ka‘ō‘ō. He would sometimes accompany Mama Lily to the practice sessions which were held once a week. When I met him, he was a tall, thin, dark man and he was very distinctive because he always wore a beautiful red sash. I studied under Mama Lily for two years and then I was graduated in a traditional ‘uniki ceremony. I started teaching in 1948 when I moved to Kalihi. I had six children and I was working at Pearl Harbor. To supplement our income, I started teaching hula at the military posts because after the war that seemed to be the only marketplace for entertainment. There are fifteen basic steps to the traditional hula and the young kumu should stick to them and channel their energy into the expressiveness of the dance. The traditional hula of today is very different from what was taught to me in my time and I have a difficult time understanding its connection and resemblance to the Hawaiian culture I was brought up in. I fear that the Hawaiian community of the future may end up with a traditional dance that has no connection to its past.