Bella Richards
description: Bella Richards The late Bella Richards, a respected hula resource, taught hula for over forty years. Born on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, she later founded the Bella Richards' Hula Studio in Kailua, O‘ahu. I went through ‘ūniki exercises with Bella Kuamoʻo of Keaukaha. It was just a presentation. I graduated as a dancer, not a kumu. I studied with Bella for three years. We went to her house because in those times there was no such thing as a hālau. Hālau was not a freely-used word like it is today. It meant a very choice group of people. In a real hālau the students had to live with the kumu, eat and sleep with the kumu. I believe only those people can call themselves students of a hālau. My first teacher in the hula was my mother and she has been my most important influence because she was family. Her kumu was Elizabeth Beamer and I was taught piano and Hawaiian bass along with the dance. When I turned eight my father passed away and my mother said nobody must mourn. She packed us all up and sent us to Bella Kuamoʻo. Bella taught us the ten basic ‘ōlapa steps but she gave us no instruction in chanting. After several years of in-depth study with Bella, I was graduated as a dancer. Then I was sent to Mary Fujii, the mother of Edith Kanaka‘ole, who I studied under for the next two years. I learned a lot from Mrs. Fujii because her style of teaching was very strict. We would sit on the floor and the kumu would stand on our legs. Then we would stand in the doorway with our hands outstretched and ‘ami to the floor then back up. This was all to make our bodies flexible enough to dance the way our kumu expected us to dance. In those days you could not question the kumu. You just had to do what you were told. You had to listen to every word and watch every motion because when it came time to dance the kumu gave you little if any help. I began to teach in Hilo with my mother in 1935. What I remember about teaching was that the Hawaiian people I taught never took notes or wrote…