Emma Kapiolani Farden Sharpe

Emma Kapiolani Farden Sharpe
Emma Sharpe is a member of the Farden family of Maui and today makes her home in Lahaina. Mrs. Sharpe is credited with helping to pioneer the renaissance of the hula throughout the island of Maui.


As a little girl of eight, I lived in the village of Pu‘unoa in Lahaina with a lot of Hawaiian families surrounding us. There was always a lot of dancing and a lot of music. I used to love to listen to their singing. But going towards the fence and looking over I would see people doing the hula. And I would always want to learn what they were doing. I would always see kupuna coming together and having a party and singing and dancing to their songs. That’s what really interested me since my dad couldn’t send me to a dancing school. You see what I was always interested in was the ballet. Since I couldn’t go to a school for ballet then I wanted to go to a school for hula.

My family being musical with instruments such as the guitar, ‘ukulele, autoharp, mandolin, and piano; it was natural for me to want to be a dancer. I didn’t study with a kumu until I was fifteen-years-old because my father didn’t want me to dance. His only exposure to the hula was what was being danced on Lahaina Street and he didn’t want any of his children ever becoming involved with that. I wanted to learn the hula so badly but at that time the only hula that was performed was done at private parties. As far as I can remember I don’t think there was one hālau on Maui at that time. A neighbor of ours told me about her mother- in-law Kauhai Likua who was a dancer at the time of King Kalakāua’s reign. I went to see her but she refused to teach me. Kauhai at that time was a minister for the Church and she said she had danced once but she was doing God’s work now. I told her we were both children of God and when she died she would take all her knowledge with her. That helped to change her mind and for the next three years she taught me in secret because of her position in the Church.

I was her one and only student. She taught no one before or after me. I would go to her home three times a week and I would always bring two leis with me. One would be for myself and the other would be for the goddess of the hula. She had one big room where she kept her hula things and I would be taught only in that room. She would teach me only on the days she was not preaching.

I was taught hula ‘auwana but the words ‘auwana and kahiko were never used back then. I never knew any other type of hula existed but modern hula because that’s all that was danced on Maui. Now the ‘auwana that was taught to me had no music to it. It was taught to me simply by chanting. She would get her little ipu and paʻī the beat and chant the meles to me. She would talk to me briefly about each dance and then teach me the motions. While I was learning I had to follow certain kapus. I could not go into the ocean while I was menstruating and I could not go out with men. In order to enter the hālau I had to kāhea a certain phrase or I would not be allowed to enter. At the end of my training she had a little pā‘ina in which my family was invited. At the end of the meal she wrapped up all the leftover food and threw it into the ocean at Makena. This was done to purify everything that had come before.

After I graduated I wanted to learn kahiko and the kumu I wanted to learn from was Joseph ‘Īlālā‘ole. He lived in Honolulu so during the next three summers I asked him four times to teach me a chant. Each time he turned me down and it hurt because I was so eager to learn. The next time I went to Honolulu I asked Aunty Ka Treadway to speak to him for me so she brought me to his house. He was sitting on the lawn on a white settee with his brother who was a minister. Uncle Joe’s brother rose when I entered and told him that I had provided entertainment and helped set up benefit shows for all churches on Maui and I deserved to be helped. At that point his wife who I think had the last say all along told Uncle Joe to take me in. From that day on I was his student. I would come to Honolulu every summer to teach at the University of Hawai‘i and I would live with Uncle Joe for one week before classes started. He taught me only kahiko and I wish he had lived long enough to teach me the hula kapu. I learned from Uncle Joe by just watching and listening. First he would show me the dance, then explain the mele, then he would pa‘i the drum, and this is how I learned. He sent me to Kawena Pūku‘i and I would show her a mele from Uncle Joe and she would give me the background on it. She used to kid me because I was always writing and drawing everything down but I told her when she and Uncle Joe passed away there would be something to pass on to the next generation. My sincere gratitude goes to these three kumu that gave so much to my life.

I see steps today that I’ve never seen before. Steps are not precise and controlled today but long and outstretched. People ‘uehe outward today rather than upward and I’ve never seen an ancient dance before where the dancer falls to the floor and lays there. But this is what I’m seeing today. The hula of my time was not done for entertainment only but mainly to share the culture. I believe the Hawaiian people must teach and share their own culture. If we create, we must acknowledge what is a modern creation because the modern audience, left uninformed, will believe they have seen a traditional dance. The big problem of today is that many of our Hawaiian people themselves don’t know what is and is not traditionally Hawaiian in the hula.