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 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.
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.
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.
William Kahakuleilehua Haunu‘u Ching
Nā Kumu Hula William Kahakuleilehua Haunu‘u Ching - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 28
In March 1986 William “Sonny" Ching established Hālau Na Mamo O Puʻuanahulu which is currently located in the Kapahulu and Kapālama areas of Honolulu. It was preordained that I would be the one to continue hula in my family. Both my grandmother and great grandmother could foresee it. After I was born, my great grandmother said I was going to be the chanter. At the age of four my grandmother started teaching me some of the chants and we would progress to the dancing. When I was twelve, my father decided that I shouldn’t dance so my grandmother taught me without his permission. Now he is my biggest supporter. My grandmother Lena Pua‘ainahau Eleakala Nahulu Guerrero was my confidant, my roommate, my grandmother, and my best friend. She taught me on a one-to-one situation and we usually did things on a daily basis. We always preceded our training with prayer and because my grandmother was of pure koko and was fluent in the language, she prayed in Hawaiian. That’s how I run my class today. Before we dance, we pray to Akua and to Laka. My grandmother told me I can never set up a kuahu because my hālau is to be dedicated to God. But it was all right to do the chants that honor Laka because those chants need to continue otherwise it would be forgotten. For us this is part of the ritual that prepares us spiritually, physically, and mentally for the hula. This is one of the ways we build our mana. The method that my grandmother used to teach me hula and chant was by imitation. This is also the way I teach today. We just repeated this process until she felt I was doing ii correctly. She chanted, I chanted. She danced, I danced. I was not allowed to write anything which was good because when you learn strictly through memory, things tend to stay with you longer. I had an ‘ūniki with my grandmother in February of 1984. It wasn’t a traditional ʻailolo ceremony but more like a hu‘elepo. It was a private ritual of prayers and food and was held during the day. I was presented and I danced and chanted some of the things I was taught. I don’t think my grandmother felt that I was truly ready to ‘ūniki but she knew that her time was ending and she felt it was necessary to do this. She even told me that though I received her permission to teach that it didn’t mean I was through learning. That for everything I knew, there was a hundred other things I didn’t know! And that I was to go on seeking knowledge. Thus the saving in our hālau, “Ho‘oulu i ka na‘auao” (To grow in wisdom). When I was fifteen, my grandmother gave me permission to experience being in a hālau. That was my beginning with Frank Kawaikapuokalani Hewett. It was incredible to belong to his hālau. The mana within the hālau was and is very strong and you could feel the spirit permeate the air. The students had so much aloha for each other and they were so willing to spend extra time to help you learn. I was never one of his best students. I know that I did not get enough of all he had to offer. He has so much knowledge of the culture; his whole lifestyle lives the culture. This is probably the greatest lesson I have learned from him. Becoming a kumu hula doesn’t mean you just teach hula. Becoming and being a kumu hula dictates your whole lifestyle. It dictates the way you think, your actions, and your view on life. All of these things are interrelated. I danced with Frank for about three years and it was he who gave me the name I use today, Kahakuleilehua. After moving to town however it just became too difficult to continue commuting to He‘eia on the bus with all of my hula implements and my other interests started playing more of an important role in my life. I guess that I did not have the dedication, discipline, and desire strong enough to continue. After about a year and a half I started with Lahela Ka‘aihue. It was Lahela who truly taught me to love the hula ‘auana. She is such a beautiful dancer. I could sit for hours and watch her dance. The style of dancing that we do, especially the men’s ‘auana, is really Lahela. I went through a period where I wanted to be a fashion designer in New York City. Thank God I never pursued that dream. As I got older, I realized the importance of teaching hula. In 1986 Moses Crabb asked me to take over his class at Pākī Park because he was concentrating on his kumu hula training with Robert Cazimero. I started teaching a group of kupuna and ten years later I m still at Pākī Park. Some of the kupuna in my class today are the same ladies from that original class. For any of my students to become kumu hula, they need to be stronger in the language. They need to have a better understanding of the poetry of the chants and to understand the kaona or the hidden meaning of the chants. I require them to learn all of the kuahu chants and the dressing chants. In addition I think it is very important that kumu hula are able to choreograph, create, write, take a chant from the 1600s or 1700s and put it into hula movements today. I cannot say that what we do is what the teachers of old would do. It is good that some hula masters perpetuated things exactly as they were taught to them. And it is through their teachings that we will always have what was from a time before us. But that is not my job. My job is to perpetuate hula in the ancient styles and not be too loud or outrageous in the kahiko movements. It needs to be done within these guidelines. You need to maintain tradition even if it is choreographed today. Most importantly a kumu needs to be strong spiritually. Kumu also means foundation or base and if the foundation is not strong, you cannot build upon it. I believe that hula is getting back to being performed more in the traditional manner. There was a period when the hula was getting a little too wild; too many introductions of other dance forms, especially to the hula kahiko. I think it has turned around due to the revival of other aspects of our culture like the ‘ōlelo, oli, planting, la‘au lapa‘au, navigation, hūnā, lua, weaving, amongst others. I hope that people like myself and my fellow kumu hula are looking to keeping things traditional vet conducive to our times. The hula has changed over time and I think that this is a good thing or it is my belief that the hula would die. I think each of us breathe our own breath into our dance, our haumāna, our hālau. This need is why we are kumu hula. That is what makes each of us unique, different. If we did things the same, there would be no need for different hālau. A handful would suffice and we would be unable to document our times. 28 William Kahakuleilehua Haunuʻu Ching
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.
Victoria Sunday Napuananionapalionako‘olau Kekuaokalani Mariteragi
Nā Kumu Hula Victoria Sunday Napuananionapalionako‘olau Kekuaokalani Mariteragi - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 76
Sunday Mariteragi, a physical education instructor at Kahuku High School, teaches hula on the grounds of the Polynesian Cultural Center. I took hula from Aunty Sally Wood Naluai when I was five- years-old. The only time I stopped was when she went to the mainland. Aunty taught in Kane‘ohe but I also remember traveling with her to places like Kalihi, Waimanalo, and the North Shore. I was fourteen- years-old when she went to teach the college kids at the Polynesian Cultural Center. She would use me as her alaka‘i and sometimes she actually left me to teach her classes in Kāne‘ohe. Before any kind of refinement in hula, Aunty’s first and foremost concern was timing. The fundamental steps were next and then the graceful refinement of the hands. Movement came with kahiko; you had to bend. But your body still had to flow and your arms always had to be projected so everybody could see your motions. Those were her thoughts. She was never one for dancing too close to herself. It was always an open style. It was in 1980 that my sister Ellen Gay and I had our ‘ūniki. The ceremony was held at Aunty Sally’s home in Kahaluʻu and we had to explain the different traditional chants like “Kawika,” ‘“'AuʻaʻIa,” “Ku‘i Moloka‘i,” “Ua Nani ‘O Nuʻuanu.” We had to explain and dance all of them. We had to describe the many uses of the ti leaf and make our own haku for the drum and for the ipu. And then we had to do many hula ‘auana and we had to explain each song and describe the different narratives of each song. This was in front of family and close friends. I started teaching hula in Kāne‘ohe as early as 1970. I had finished college and I was living at my family’s home in Kāne‘ohe. I taught physical education at Kailua Intermediate School and included hula in the curriculum. I also held hula classes after school. Traditionally, ancient dances were not done too fast. Now the dances are so fast. Sometimes you don’t have enough time to see motions. You’ll see movement maybe but not specific things where you can pick up a communicated idea. But I don’t think anything is wrong with that. Hula kahiko started as a ceremonial dance recalling genealogy and histories of the past. Kahiko can also be mele that are done with accompaniment such as an ipu or drum. It can also be a newly created chant of the present. Hula played a major part in giving me confidence. I love to dance. I feel it’s my one talent that I’m most comfortable in doing. I can appreciate all styles of hula. What lʻve learned from Aunty Sally: the consistent training, the patience, and the tolerance, has helped me as an educator. I thank my aunty for her patience and tolerance with me and for being my source of encouragement. 76 Victoria Sunday Napuananionapalionako'olau Kekuaokalani Mariteragi
Victoria Hanaka‘ulani-0- Kamamalu Holt Takamine
Nā Kumu Hula Victoria Hanaka‘ulani-O-Kamamalu Holt Takamine - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 111
Kumu hula of Pua Aliʻi Ilima, Vicky Takamine also teaches Hawaiian chant, dance and culture at the University of Hawaiʻi- Mānoa and the Leeward Community College. When students come To me, the first thing I tell them is that I might not be the right teacher for them. So if they don’t care for the way I’m teaching or they’re not getting anything out of my classes, l don’t feel badly if they want to move on. If they come and they want to adapt to my style then the first thing we do is train in kahiko. I also teach them the text of a song because the important thing about the dance is not just the movements, it’s the text. Just teaching feet and hands have no meaning. It is not Hawaiian. I teach them a song right away to get them moving and to get them involved. I want them to feel that they can accomplish a chant or a song in a short period of time. I want them to feel very confident in their own ability. I started dancing at a very young age by watching television and watching my mother dance. She used to dance with the Alama sisters. I took formal lessons with Aunty Māʻiki Aiu at the age of fifteen when she was located at Ke‘eaumoku Street. I studied with her until I graduated from high school in 1965. For five years I was going to hula off and on. In 1970 Aunty Māʻiki opened her hula classes for kumu hula and a year later I started with her again. The first thing we learned with Aunty Māʻiki was basic hands and feet. She had a special song that she had created just for us, and she taught us the basic hand gestures and foot movements that went with the song. We won Id start learning to speak and understand the language from the first day we walked into class. We always had a test at the end of the month. So if we were in the Friday class, the last Friday of the month was set aside for words and translation for whatever mele or song we had learned that month. You had to keep on your toes because she would pull things out of the hat that we learned several months before. We were expected to learn the words to the songs and the translations. We wrote all of the movements down and kept it in a folder along with the research on all of the songs that we learned and the places that we studied. It was quite intensive. I didn’t know that I was going to be a teacher when I started dancing with Aunty Māʻiki. I just had this love for the hula and the Hawaiian culture. But when I came back to study with her, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. In 1975 I graduated as ‘ōlapa, ho‘opa‘a and kumu hula from Aunty Māʻiki. My hālau started in the backyard of Aunty Verna Wilson. She got a group of students together and I gave my first lesson in her patio in ‘Aiea. The joy I get from teaching hula is being able to share different experiences with my students and to watch them develop as a dancer, develop self-confidence, and develop grace. It’s satisfying to nurture somebody who wall want more of the Hawaiian culture and the language instead of just the movements to the dance. Because Aunty Māʻiki was my only teacher, I don’t think that I could get away from her style of dance. That is always going to be with me. Of course when I left Aunty Māʻiki, I developed my own ways but the basic foundation that she’s laid for me will always be there. Hula kahiko is not the same as it was fifty years ago or even twenty years ago for that matter. We as people have evolved and have changed and therefore our likes and our dislikes have changed. We tend to keep things that we like and set aside things that we don’t like. So if we learn something that we don’t care for, we won’t carry that on to the next generation and those things will be lost. Nānā I Nā Loea Hula 111
Nā Kumu Hula Ulalia Ka‘ai Berman - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 19
Ulalia Berman, a resource teacher with Department of Education, Hawaiian Studies-Kupuna Program, is kumu hula of Ulalia Hawaiian School of Dance located in Kailua-Kona. Hula was taught to me at the age of one and a half years by an aunt. Because one of my legs was shorter than the other, hula was an exercise to even out my legs. At three-years-old my brothers and sister took me to Puʻunui Playground where Bose Lane was teaching hula. She taught hapa haole songs, a lot of ʻauana, and no kahiko. Aunti Alice Nāmakelua also taught at this park. I thought she was so strict. Little did I know that she would be a great influence on me and many of the hālau. At the age of seven Daddy wanted me to learn from his cousin Kuulei Stibbard but by this time, I was enrolled at Hula Hālau ʻO Māʻiki and on my way to the life that gave me so much. I was fortunate to have learned how to do the business end of the hālau while in high school. I took care of registration, collecting tuition, checking who had which costumes, and who was ready. I learned from the ground up. When Aunti Māʻiki was called away, I taught for her. And to teach your peers when you are still in high school is not easy. So I learned all these teaching techniques before I became a kumu. The teachings of Aunti Māʻiki enriched us all as she shared the love of her mentors. We were surrounded with people and love for all that life has to offer. I have so many memories of concerts, lūʻau shows, boat arrivals and departures, Aloha Week, and holokū balls. We were one of the first young children to dance in what is known today as the “Gibson Mūʻū.” Everyone called them pajamas. But Aunti Vicky Iʻi gave Aunti Māʻiki that high neck “Mother Hubbard” style and it became an insignia for the hālau. And of course we would perform with hula skirts made with one hundred fifty ti leaves, two pua melia lei and a head lei, or cellophane skirts, or red and white sarongs that people called the “Dorothy Lamour look.” When I moved back to Honolulu from Kona, Aunti Māʻiki bad started a kumu class. The only requirement was the student’s desire to learn. Having a young family at that time, I didn’t know what my goals were. I couldn’t envision where I was going to be years down the road. At times it shocked me that I was studying to become a kumu hula. But on August 27, 1973 I ʻūniki as ʻōlapa with Aunti Māʻiki and the following year I finished as kumu hula along with the Papa Lehua class. While an understudy with Aunti Māʻiki I was sent to teach hula at the Cathedral School. In September of 1973 I had the opportunity to teach for the Kalihi-Pālama Culture & Arts Society in community facilities located in the Kūhiō Park Terrace, Mayor Wrights Housing and Kamehameha Housing. A year and a half of working within the Liliha - Kalihi area provided a great learning experience. With the blessings of Aunti Māʻiki, Ulalia School of Hawaiian Dance opened in 1976 at my home in Nuʻuanu. Thus began the life of a young kumu hula with a young family, grateful for all that was bestowed upon me. Life, fulfillment, enrichment. That’s the meaning of being a kumu hula and my kumu Aunti Māʻiki had all of these. She not only taught us about hula, she taught us about life. She shared the ups and downs because it was part of life. It’s harder to be a kumu hula today because we have to be “on top of everything” w hereas while studying with Aunti Maʻiki, we took one thing at a time; a program for Tripler Army Hospital this w7eek and a program for Aunti Bina Mossman next week. I am honored when people recognize Aunti Māʻiki’s style when my haumāna dance the hula. Though I’m sure I have developed a few of my own motions over the years, I still come from the hālau of Aunti Māʻiki and I continue her style. I give credit to my husband Kona and our children Kaleihoku-o-kona, Analu Kaʻai, Hoʻolaikahiluonalani, and Lononuiakea for their continued support. I’m proud to know that Hoʻolai and Lono carry on our rich legacy of Ilawaiʻi through music, dance, language, and love for cultural awareness. Kona and I pass on our love so they may continue to enrich future generations. E ola mau! "Life, fulfillment, enrichment. That is the meaning of being a kumu hula and my kumu Aunti Māʻiki had all of these. ”
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.
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.
Samuel (Kamuela) Nae‘ole
Samuel (Kamuela) Nae‘ole The late Sam Naeʻole taught the hula in Hawaii for twenty-six years. He was affiliated with the Kalihi-Pālama Culture & Arts Society as a kumu hula and is credited with pioneering the hula in the Hawaiian Homestead of Waimanalo, O‘ahu. My mother and aunty were dream translators in the Hawaiian community and I told them I had dreamt I had been taken to a great house. Within the house was an old man who beckoned me to come in. They told me that this was a sign that I was the chosen one to carry on the spirit of the old man’s body. The next day I went to hula class and Lokalia (Montgomery) told me to stay late. She drove me out of Kapahulu and we came to the same house that I had dreamt of the night before. When we entered the home she was greeted by an old man who introduced himself as Joseph ‘Īlālā’ole. He was dying at the time and he had asked Lokalia to bring him a male student to train. My aunty Mary Ho was a kumu hula and my parents were musicians at the old Home in The Garden, but I wasn’t interested in the culture and when 1 graduated from Farrington High School in 1949 I knew nothing about it. I moved to Los Angeles and in 19511 came back home for a vacation. I was asked by other Hawai'i people in Los Angeles to study hula so I could come back and teach. So I went to the phone book and looked for a male teacher and the name I found was Tom Hiona. His studio was located on Maunakea and King Street and he charged twenty-five dollars a lesson. Tom had been trained by Kau‘i Zuttermeister but he was something original and extraordinary. His mind was always filled with ideas that raised the hula to higher ground. As far as I know he was the first person to produce tableaus and pageants that dealt with the culture in a deeper and more profound way. I stayed with Tom until 1952 when he closed his studio, and I went on to Ho‘oulu Davis in Kailua but within a year she left and I was out in the cold again. After Ho‘oulu I informally studied under Kawena Pūku‘i in Kaimukī. My father would take me to work with him at daybreak and I would be dropped off at St. Louis High School. From there I would walk to Mrs. Pūku‘i’s home and for three dollars I would be taught one song. She would ask me to choose four subjects to write about and this was how I was encouraged and trained to write hula songs and traditional chants. I went on to train informally under Kathy Nākaula, Joseph ‘Īlālā’ole, Pua Haʻaheo, and Ka‘o‘o, but my next formal teacher was Lokalia Montgomery. In 1954 Lokalia Montgomery charged a pre-paid tuition of four hundred dollars and I didn’t have the money. So I saved what I could and sold the only possession I had that was worth anything which was my piano. Lokalia lived off Kapahulu Avenue in a big white house and we were trained five days a week from 8:30 in the morning till 2:30 in the afternoon with a thirty- minute lunch. The majority of her students were Japanese from the University who were taking lessons as part of an Asian studies requirement for graduation. We would be trained in her big parlour where we were first taught the different beats on the ipu and then she would give us one chant to learn. We would recite the chant and she would correct us as we went along. In the old days the kumu would transfer their spirit into the body of their students but Lokalia did not believe in this. We were responsible for making our own implements so Lokalia’s husband Timothy taught us how to dye material, paint, and produce traditional Hawaiian crafts. I did not ‘ūniki with any of my teachers because the graduation ceremony with the traditional rituals was not popular back in the Forties and Fifties. If a student graduated traditionally their kumu would have to carry the burden if a haumāna broke a kapu and nobody really wanted any part of that. Today the emphasis seems to be on the ‘ūniki but my advice to the young dancers is go back to the kupuna to get your legitimacy. Degrees count for very little in the hula community. I began to teach in Waimanalo in 1955 with the encouragement of friends. I charged three dollars a month for each student, and I’ve tried to teach by nurturing the positive in my haumāna. I never had an abundance of anything but I’ve never had to endure a difficult, terrible period either. I’ve tried to teach the younger people the true knowledge of the hula and I’ve looked upon that as an opportunity. The hula that is being perpetuated today as the traditional hula of our culture is a figment of someone’s imagination. A great majority of the kumu today are only on the level of students and the result is that the modern audience of today has never seen the traditional hula. Hopefully, people will get tired of all this fluff and make an effort to start finding out what is authentic and what is baloney.
Sally Moanike‘alaonāpua and Makahikina Wood Nālua‘i
Sally Moanike‘alaonāpuamakahikrna Wood Nālua‘i Sally Wood Naluaʻi graduated from the same hula class of Lokalia Montgomery that produced Māʻiki Aiu Lake and Lani Kalama. When I returned from Monterey in 1960 I really had forgotten everything. I was told I would lose my talent if I didn’t continue to study and it was gone. When I came home I hugged my drum and ipu, and I said a little prayer and began to pah. And nothing came to me. I drummed and drummed, and then I started to hum along and as I continued I began to remember “Kaulīlua”. I was born on the island of Maui in the little town of Paia. I was brought up by my granduncle and grandaunt whose name was Kekuo‘okalani. We left Maui when I was eleven and in those days there were no planes but they had ships. The only ship I remember was the Claudine. This was an inter-island ship. We didn’t have money to pay for rooms so we stayed downstairs in the steerage with the selamoku and they fed us fish and sour poi. My cousin Hattie Au gave up her home in Kahana Bay for us to live in and when she moved to Lā‘ie, I went along with her. Lucy Munson was a friend of my cousin and she stayed with a family called the Logans down in Lā‘ie. Mr. Logan was her friend so she let Hattie rent a little house. This was where six of us women learned ancient hula under Lucy Munson and her two friends, Keaka Kanahele and Katie Nākaula. My training with Lucy Munson lasted three months and she gave us thirteen chants to study in thirteen classes. I was fifteen going on sixteen and when they started building a kuahu for the graduation, my grandaunt made me return to Kahana. In those days Kahana Bay was famous for fishing. There was only one store in the area but we could get a really good meal from the sea. I would go out with the people in the boats to fish and we would pull the nets in. We would go up into the mountains and catch ‘ōpae and ‘o‘opu, and we would haul taro down and pound it into poi. My grandaunt taught me how to work and I really enjoyed those days in Kahana. Pua Ha‘aheo held the fishing rights to Kahana Bay at that time and his sister and I were very close. She and I knew three chords on the ‘ukulele but we would serenade the houses on the beach during Christmas and New Year’s and that’s how we would raise money for the church. After I married my first husband and left Kahana, Pua Ha’aheo asked me to train under him. I stayed with Pua for six months and then I went on to Elizabeth Lau who taught modern hula in Kapahulu. Her kumu was Pualani Mossman and I payed twenty-five cents for a half-hour lesson. You would get six songs in a half hour and it was up to you to grab what you could get. In 1946 Aunty Rose Joshua asked me if I wanted to learn from Lokalia Montgomery and she told me to go down to Charles Street in Kapahulu where I would be expected. Lokalia had the greatest influence on me. There was something in her speaking and her kindness and the way she projected herself. Up until this time I had been only trained as an ‘ōlapa but she began to give me chants to learn. If we didn’t know them at class she’d make us repeat them until we got it right. Malia Kau of Moanalua helped to paka our voices to oli and after three months I graduated. We had our ‘ūniki in Lokalia’s backyard. She had built up a little green backdrop with a little stage and it was like going into a forest. I had begun teaching informally in 1941 at Kamehameha Housing Playground with Aunty Alice Namakelua but after my training with Lokalia I was asked by Dr. Swapp to teach for the Church College of Hawai‘i in Lā‘ie. This was how I met and became close friends with Kawena Pūku‘i. I remember when the competitions first started to come in and she didn’t like it. She said we had been given the hula to ho‘olaule‘a to share with one another but not to compete with one another. The hula kahiko has come from our kupuna and their kupuna. Some kumu say there are ninety steps to the kahiko and I never heard of that. To me there were sixteen steps and that was all I was taught. The basic steps have been changed so much that I cannot tell where they have come from. The kumu that I studied under encouraged creativity but it was a privilege that they gave to only a few, chosen students that they trusted. The problem we have today is that we have teachers who are creating within the hula kahiko that were never chosen or approved to create by any master teacher. They have approved themselves.
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.
Rose Look Rose Look has taught the hula for twenty-seven years and resides today in Ewa Beach, O‘ahu. In 1945 she produced an album and a single entitled “Darling Kuʻuipo” which became a theme song for her in the late 1940s. When I was growing up my father was very close to a Hawaiian family who lived on Pensacola Street called the Lamberts. My father loved to play his ‘ukulele and sing Hawaiian songs. His influence prompted me to learn the hula under Alice K. Garner at the age of thirteen. She was my first teacher and she was strict in the sense she made sure you danced the correct way. Her system was built on fundamentals and she was continually drilling us on the basics. I studied with Alice from age thirteen all through my intermediate school years until I graduated from high school. She was my biggest influence because she was my first and longest kumu. She was what I felt a dancer should be. Aunty Alice had an inner beauty that radiated out through her gestures and in her relationships with people and that’s what attracted me to her. I wanted to go into ‘ōlapa in a deeper way. At that time in ‘ōlapa dancing they did not take Orientals but Kamuela Nae‘ole talked to Lokalia Montgomery and so she interviewed me and accepted me into her class. Lokalia’s studio and home was on Charles Street. She would sit with me first and we would talk about all the ancient chants and Hawaiian history, then we would go into her hālau and she would explain the dances to me. I studied with Lokalia in private classes for one year and then I took a three-month course with Aunty Kau‘i Zuttermeister. Along the way as I was learning I realized that there was nobody who could say which kumu, which method, which step was the correct way. The Japanese have a classical line of dancing, the Chinese have a line, but what does the hula have? Who is to say which hula style is the right way? There is no one and this is sad. I began to teach in 1956 because I wanted to teach hula kahiko and ‘auwana as classical dances. When I started my career the hula was a dime-a-dozen thing. People would just pick it up, take one course, and start dancing immediately and as a result I’ve seen so many along the way that just abused the hula. I begin my youngest students with an introduction to what the hula is all about. I wanted to help children emotionally; I wanted to give them confidence in themselves. I just wanted to help the little keikis. A kumu has to pick up the feelings and emotions of her students. You cannot teach everyone the same, each student has to be handled in the particular way that draws the best out of them. I start to teach them basic steps once their attention span has matured enough. I don’t believe in yelling or embarrassing my students, I believe there has to be a better way of teaching. My advice to a young dancer is you have to be beautiful inside to do anything well. Beauty starts from within. You can have all the steps, all the physical attributes but unless you have an inner beauty you are just a person moving from side to side. Hula is beautiful and to portray it you must have a humility and respect for people. My goal throughout my life was to teach what I considered to be the right way of dancing hula. I think the biggest change that has come across the hula is that the kahiko being performed today is not what I had come to know as ancient hula. It is nothing like what was taught to me by my kumu and so I end up asking myself has the hula been changed or have I missed something along the way in my training?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ray Kahikilaulani Fonseca
Nā Kumu Hula Kay Kaliikilaulani Fonseca - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 38
Ray Fonseca began teaching in 1980 and established Hālau Hula ‘O Kahikilaulani located in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. I started as a Tahitian drummer for Keolalaulani Hula Studio and then with Pauline Padeken and Lokelani Andersen. Aunty Pauline’s and Aunty Lokelani’s group went to Hilo to participate in the Merrie Monarch Festival and that’s when I met Uncle George Nā‘ope. He liked my Tahitian and asked me to come to Hilo to teach at his hālau. So in the summer of 1973 I left Honolulu to live with Uncle George and I didn’t return home until three years later. I learned to dance hula at the age of seventeen while living with Uncle George. I went everywhere with him and that’s how I began taking an interest in hula. Although Uncle George was my kumu hula for many years, he encouraged me to learn from other hula resources. He made me go to workshops and told me who to take from. He directed me to learn from Lokalia Montgomery. I took workshops from Henry Pa and took classes from Aunty Edith Kanaka‘ole and Aunty Eleanor Hiram Hoke. Uncle George wanted me to broaden my horizon and not be limited to learning only from him. In 1977 I ‘ūniki from Uncle George and in 1980 I opened my hālau in Hilo. At that time Hilo did not have too many teachers especially in hula kahiko. I named my hālau Hālau Hula ‘O Kahikilaulani meaning, “The Staff of Heaven.” Kahikilaulani was my hula name given to me at my ‘ūniki by Uncle George. When I am teaching, it is the force within me that drives me. Everything in my life is related to hula. i keep the traditional dances exactly as i learned them from Uncle George. These dances will be carried on. My joy is to see my students perform to the best of their abilities and to do it with full love and understanding of the art. In my hālau we try to do everything ourselves. We make the implements, feather lei, haku lei, and costumes. It gives my students a feeling of accomplishment when they dance in costumes that they made themselves. When I win at competition, I first feel fortunate and blessed. I always tell the dancers to thank the Almighty who allows us to be here. What really matters is that they all come off that stage feeling good about themselves and that they have a greater understanding of the art. Uncle George is my greatest inspiration. He always told me that in hula, the sharing of one’s knowledge enhances one’s own knowledge. So my job was to share what l have learned with the people of Hawai‘i and in turn I would gain more knowledge. If I get stuck on a chant, I will go to him to ask for advice. Until today even if we live apart, I am still with Uncle George in spirit. “My joy is to see my students perform to the best of their abilities and to do it with full love and understanding of the art.” 38 Ray Kahikilaulani Fonseca
Nā Kumu Hula Rachael Akuu Kamakana - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 52
The late Rachael Kamakana established her hālau on the island of Molokai in I968. The name Hula Hālau O Molokaʻi was given to her by her kumu hula Harriet Nē. My mother used to get very upset because I was a real tomboy. I was more interested in playing baseball and basketball with the boys rather than doing girl things. So I was hauled to Tom Hiona at the age of fifteen to learn how to dance the hula. He was supposed to make me feminine and act like a little lady. They had to drag me to him and it wasn’t a very happy experience for me. I was sent to Tom Hiona because he and my uncle were good buddies. He was doing my uncle a favor by taking me, so I went to his class. I wanted to learn how to dance ‘auana but he said that he would determine what I was going to learn and he only taught kahiko to beginners. I learned all the standard traditional chants like “A Ko‘olau An” and “Aia Lā 'O Pele.” He was very strict during these sessions and he made me cry every time I went to class because I didn’t do it right. After one year I told my uncle that I was pau. I didn’t return to hula until my husband and I came home to Molokaʻi to take care of his father. After I had my last child, I joined Aunty Harriet Nē’s classes in 1962. Aunty Harriet had all her lessons planned. She would have the words to the song or chant done for us. She talked about the song or chant and gave us whatever knowledge she knew. She did not require us to research the mele but she encouraged us to talk to our tūtū and aunties. We were responsible for writing the directions and if you lost your paper, you had to recall it from memory. After about three years she held an ʻūniki: a completion for those lessons given to us. Although we had no paper or certificate, she said it was the old way where she brought witnesses to see that you had completed a certain part of the training. Aunty Harriet was pleased that we had completed the ‘ūniki and she continued to prepare us to become kumu hula. She gave us certain chants and mele to research. We had to teach the basic fundamental steps and a hula number to a new student. She would also require us to do demonstrations at a moment’s notice. Under the State Foundation on Culture and t he Arts, Aunty Hoakalei Kamau‘u started a training program to develop kumu hula in the community. They contacted Aunty Harriet because she was known as the historian for Molokaʻi. She called me and encouraged me to join the program. When I got involved in the class, one of the conditions of receiving the training was that we would have to teach for free in the community for one year. I fulfilled my commitment by teaching on Molokaʻi. However when I finished, there was a great response for me to continue to have classes. I talked with Aunty Harriet about opening a school and she thought it was a wonderful idea. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to dance my life away. I saw myself as going from teacher to teacher, just learning and having a wonderful time. But once I started to teach, I was besieged by people who really wanted to learn. To me the language is the important key. It is the key to understanding. The key that can better define a feeling, a sense, and a thought. My greatest accomplishment as a hula teacher is the experience of teaching. I have had to learn to do research and learn all the different aspects of the culture. Now I am able to transmit this information to others.
Puluelo Park Puluelo Park was born in Hoea, Kohala and moved to Watertown, O‘ahu at the age of nine. She established the Puamana Hula Studio in 1952 and currently resides in Kailua, O‘ahu. I remember when I was nine- years-old I went shopping with my mother down on Fort Street. I heard a man’s voice chanting and I followed it to the old Princess Theatre. I sat inside that dark theatre for hours listening to a man who turned out to be Tom Hiona while my mother was going crazy outside looking for me. As a youngster growing up in Kohala I was trained informally by my aunties, but my first formal teacher in the hula was Caroline Tuck of Honolulu. I was trained in hula ‘auwana and I was fascinated by her classes and her teaching techniques. Caroline would have her students flat on their backs with only their arms and hands extended upward, and in this position they would go through the motions of a dance. When I turned eleven I learned kahiko from a teacher that was so strict that I lost all interest in the hula for a period of years. After I married and began my family, I started to realize that the Hawaiian side of my children would be neglected if I didn’t bring our hula culture to them at a very tender age. So at the age of thirty I began to train under Lokalia Montgomery who lived in Kapahulu on Charles Street. I loved Lokalia’s way of teaching because what she taught me was free from the kapus and so there was never any fear of the hula when I studied with her. A usual class with Lokalia would begin with a talk session. She would tell me the story background and meaning of the particular mele we were going to learn that day. There was no sense of rush like today where we want the children to learn as much as possible in a certain amount of time. Not those days. She would chant the first three lines of the mele and I would repeat the lines back to her. After every three lines she would stop and give deeper explanations of each line and we would not go on to a new portion of the mele until I was comfortable with the first. My training with Lokalia was mostly kahiko and she said that her line was from Tūtū Keaka Kanahele and Mary Kawena Pūku‘i. At the same time I was being trained by Lokalia I was also being instructed by Aunty Katie Nākaula. I was trained in the kuahu style of chanting and dancing for a year and a half and I found her to be much different than Lokalia. She had been brought into the hula from childhood and she was always emphasizing the correct placement of the feet and hands. Lokalia was always worried about your posture and how you presented yourself. Aunty Kathy was more interested in how you put your dance across so I learned the motions and gestures of the dances almost immediately in her classes. I went through an ‘ūniki with Aunty Kathy but my mother prevented her from taking me through the rituals. Lokalia had a tremendous influence on me. She made me keep my head up and I danced proudly. She was always so calm and collected and she taught me to respect who I was. It was she who encouraged me to open my hālau. After my training with her a private recital was held at her hālau which was followed with a graduation pa‘ina. After the pa‘ina she told me, ‘My dear, you are to open your halau now, starting in your home.’ I opened Puamana Hula Studio on July 25, 1952 in Pālolo Valley and I began with five students who were mostly family. Because of family obligations I had to close the hālau in 1953 but in 1960 I re-opened the hālau in Hau‘ula and eventually moved it to Kailua. Today’s training emphasizes more physical expression of the ideas in the mele. Some of the hula kahiko today even resembles martial arts. The hula audience of old was made up of people who knew the hula and knew the language so the gestures of the dancers could be more subtle. Today’s kahiko is what the modern audience wants it to be but it’s not necessarily the hula of old. Each kumu in the past had their own style and you didn’t see it mixed with other cultures like it is today. Lokalia taught me that the old way is not the only way and that as a teacher, you must be creative but I feel this creativity has gotten out of hand. The older kumu have to step forward and draw the line of what is traditional. There is so much doubt today because the majority of us aren’t directly linked to the old days.
Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele and Nālani Kanaka‘ole
Nā Kumu Hulas Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele and Nālani Kanaka‘ole - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 54
Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele Daughter of renown chanter and kumu hula Edith Kanakaʻole, Pualani Kanahele along with her sister Nālani Kanaka‘ole received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award in 1993. I have been formally teaching hula for about twenty years. My mother and my sister Nālani taught together first. Then I taught with my mother while my sister was resting. In time my sister came back and three of us taught together until my mother died. Since then my sister and I have continued teaching hula. I first learned hula when I was four-years-old. My teacher was my grandmother Kekuewa Kanaele who taught at her home in Keaukaha. I learned under her until I was nine- years-old then I went to my oldest cousin Mary Keahilihau. She was my grandmother’s oldest grandchild. She and my mother taught until she went to the mainland. My mother continued to teach. My grandmother was the strictest teacher of all. She didn’t want us to play around. When it was time to dance, it was time to dance. She didn’t favor family or somebody close to her. She treated everybody alike. Everybody were students. She would praise you as well as hit you with the kumu nī‘au or the bamboo if you didn’t listen. If you were fooling around or if you didn’t observe well and you didn’t execute your steps well, you would get hit. So everytime we got hit, we would remember that motion well. That’s the way my grandmother taught. I enjoyed dancing. I liked to get into the spirit of dancing and just dance. I also know that in my mother’s later years, she was grooming us to take over. She became more conscious of chanting and started to teach us chant styles in our later years. We already knew that we would have to take over. Each of my three hula teachers added different things to my hula career. My grandmother taught me discipline, to pay attention, to be able to observe what was going on. Observation while you’re dancing is very important. She also taught me the basic movements. While dancing with my cousin we learned a different perspective of hula through entertainment. It allowed our hula to grow. When it came to my mother, her most valuable gift was the time she spent grooming us to be teachers. Besides chanting and the different cultural values, she shared with us what is important about dancing. Towards the end of her years she brought together what we had learned as we were growing up so we were able to understand it better. All of them added something to my life, not only to hula but to being a Hawaiian. I think my greatest accomplishment is being able to understand the Pele and Hi‘iaka saga and putting everything in perspective. When you are dancing, you have to develop imagery. We can see a little more of that story than other people who are just listening to it. You actively become a part of the story when you do the hula. We used to call ourselves hula ‘ōlapa. When they asked, “What are you going to dance?” We answered, “ʻōlapa.” That meant that you were going to dance with the ipu or the pahu. Hula kahiko as we know it today is done with the primary instruments and they’re usually not so literally translated. When you do the hula it is a transcendent of that spirit of that particular hula to the dancer. The dancer takes on another spirit and it is not what you do with your body hut it is what you know and what you feel inside that comes out. When the dancer has that kind of connection with her hula, then the audience will also feel it and see it. Nālani Kanaka'ole Nālani KanakaLole is the youngest daughter of the late hula master Edith Kanakaʻole. Nālani and her sister Pualani Kanahele are kumu hula of Hālau Kekuhi which is known for its powerful and energetic style of traditional hula. Our hula tradition comes from our maternal grandmother Mary Ahiena Kanaele Fujii who was born in the early 1880s. Her birth was special because she was taken to Kaipalaoa for her piko to be cut. Then she was taken to Puna to be raised in a cave. At three she was brought to live with her kumu, Kaholowaa, in Maku‘u along with her two cousins. The three of them lived hula kapu until ʻūniki. She was given away at birth so that her rank would not be that of an ‘a‘ipu‘upu‘u, a kitchen slave, in the ruling family’s house. Hānai’d by her granduncles Keleko and Kapeliela who were well known lā‘au lapa‘au and la‘au kāhea, Tūtū Mary was raised under the kapu ‘ūhū which meant her loins were not to be soiled for any reason. ‘Ūniki came in five years but the kapu was for her lifetime. Her learning was subliminal: when she was asleep her kumu would come into her dream and teach her the hula. In the morning she would dance all that she was taught in her dream. She married at fifteen and had thirteen children from Kanaele. All her children were either raised by her granduncles or hānai. She continued to teach hula and dance and by this time she was closely associated with Akoni Mika. This was about my mother’s time. Mom started hula at age six and there were people like Napua Stevens and the Beamer girls in her papa hula. The term given to the type of hula she was studying was hula ‘auana. They still used a kuahu and they went through kuhi pua‘a and ‘ailolo. They had a sacred pā‘ū for the ‘ailolo event but they were not tied to the kapu of the kuahu. When it was our turn, Tūtū Fujii, as everyone liked to call her, was still teaching but the hālau was taken over by my oldest female first cousin Mary Keahilihau. Cousin took the older students and Tutu took the new students. My grandmother taught with the pūʻili in hand ready to hili the hand, feet or kīkala. Tūtū would also bring in the older women to massage our legs, arms, fingers, and step on our ‘ūhā. Soon after my cousin moved to the mainland so it was decided that my mom would take care of the hālau. I always knew that I was going to teach. First I was the body for my mother. She would chant and I would do the motions. After a few years I did both the chanting and the teaching. Training in our hālau is hard. The first year is strictly kahiko. The body has to be conditioned to dance forty minutes without rest. We do this for the first six months. After the first year I’ll end up with about ten students from a beginning class of sixty. In three years IʻII probably end up with about six students. One thing I do know is that I was fortunate to have known both my grandmothers. They were both opposites but the one thing they had in common was that they both refused to speak English. We were privileged to have been raised hearing the language spoken everyday.
Nā Kumu Hula Pohaku Nishimitsu - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 90
Pōhaku Nishimitsu is a Hawaiian Studies resource teacher for the Department of Education and a lecturer for the Kaua‘i Community College. He also conducts teacher workshops in Hawaiian culture for the University of Hawaiʻi School of Continuing Education on Kaua‘i. I have been teaching hula since 1979. The name of my halau is Kani Ka Palm o LohiʻPau which is a traditional name that comes from Kauai and is part of the Pele-Hi'iaka cycle. It was given to me by my kumu ‘olelo Hawaii and kumu mo‘olelo Rubellite Kawena Kinney Johnson, a Kauai native. When I think of traditional hula, I look for a mele that has a real connection to nā kupuna kahiko. Hence it has a solid foundation; it has a concrete link with the past. Traditions are like an unbroken piece of thread. It connects every era and that thread is going to continue stringing us into the next century. It will be linked back to us and back to our kupuna who came before us. Tradition has a grounding, a basis in the past, and is carried on for the future generations. I was a sophomore in high school on the Island of Kaua‘i when I started hula with Aunty Ku‘ulei Pūnua. She was teaching in Kapa‘a and Llhu‘e. She had trained under old time kumu hula Kent Ghirard and lolani Luahine. These two kumu hula were really diverse; one being modern and one immersed in the old. But both were very strict and rigid in terms of discipline and protocol. This was passed on in their teachings. I learned a number of traditional hula from Aunty Ku'ulei so I had a good foundation to grow from. I left her because I finished high school and my schooling took me to O‘ahu. I continued with my hula training and learning more about Hawaiian culture and arts. I majored in Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa with a strong emphasis on ‘ōlelo Hawaii. While on O‘ahu I started hula with Nathan Napoka and Aunty Hoakalei Kamau‘u when they were teaching in Nuʻuanu. It was special to listen to Aunty Hoakalei and the way she chanted. Her vast knowledge sparked an interest in my wanting to continue my hula education. I stayed with her for at least a year and a half. Uncle Henry Moʻike-haokahiki Pa was kumu hula for the King Kamehameha Civic Club and I started taking hula from Uncle Henry. I thought that his wealth of mana‘o and style was really neat because he was one of the oldest kumu hula still teaching. It was fabulous being able to learn things from someone who had been doing it all his life. After Uncle Henry I moved to Darrell Lupenui and Waimāpuna. It was very different because I was usually in a combined men and women class and now I was in a group made lip of all men. They were robust and able to do totally different styles of hula from what I was doing before. Darrell was founded in traditional mana‘o and styling but he was also very innovative and he tried to meld the two to make a pleasing kind of picture so that the kupuna would not find his hula offensive. After a year Darrell, Thaddius Wilson, and O'Brian Eselu found it necessary to go their separate ways. A bunch of us went with O'Brian and Thaddius and formed Na Wai ʻEhā O Puna in the summer of 1978. I stayed with them for three years. I have a great deal of respect for Uncle Henry Pa and Aunty Edith Kanaka‘ole because they taught with great aloha and humility and they conveyed what they believed through what they did. Their actions proved they were living what they talked about. Also both of them were fluent Hawaiian speakers so they knew of the nuances and things hidden away to those not maʻa i ka ‘ōlelo makuahine (not familiar with the mother tongue). They were gifted. Through them I learned that the ‘ōlelo is of vital importance to hula. Without proper ‘ōlelo, how can you have proper hula? “Pono nō e a‘o mai i ka ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi; ‘oi‘a ka mea nui. A e a‘o mai i ka hula o kou ‘aina ponoʻī.” Language is the key that opens doors. These passages shed light on things of the past; some of which are no more. We may never know everything but that’s the beauty of the hula and the mele—its subtlety. Now more so than ever I am very happy to be able to watch other people do their hula and enjoy what they are trying to do and share because of this resurgence i ka ‘olelo Hawaiʻi. 90 Pohaku Nishimitsu
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Piʻi Lani teaches hula, Hawaiian culture, language and history to senior citizens. She is credited for being the coordinator of the original Waimea Falls Park Hula Competition. My mother Kuʻualoha Terry was my hula teacher. She started teaching me when I was three-years-old. My mother never had a hālau. It was just us. She had her own studio on Aulike Street in Kailua and she taught at Camp Kokokahi in Kāne‘ohe. She learned from Mother Davis. The first few dances that we learned from my mother were the hula dances of ‘ōlapa that introduced basic hula steps. These dances were used as drills for these steps. “Kawika” would be for the kāholo, “Lili‘u E” would be for the ‘uwehe, '"Kalākaua” would he for the Kalākaua step. She drilled us in those basic steps. When we got to the intermediate level, the dances consisted of many different steps in one dance. The form of hula that she taught us was hula ‘āla‘apapa, and we were taught not to kāhea the verses. It was important that you knew exactly what verse came next so there was no kāhea being given. When we got to the advanced stages, some of the dances would be very long. The hand and foot movements of these dances were given to her and had not been changed for over a hundred years since the 1860s. So we were very careful to teach these dances exactly the same in word, melody, timing, hand gestures, and feet as they were in 1860. We come from a hula line. My grandmother on the maternal side was a hula dancer in the days when they danced without their tops. Grandma was from Hāna. Her name was Elizabeth Kawahineke‘oke‘ookala Ka‘anana. There are some pictures in the Bishop Museum of Grandma and her sisters sitting on the palm drum wearing no tops, just skirts. Grandma never told us that she was a dancer. She became very Christian and although she was pure Hawaiian, she frowned upon too much hula. She wanted us to be Christian but she did make sure that my mother learned from family to continue the hula line. My ʻūniki was held at my home in Hauʻula. I did ʻūniki along with my two sisters. We had completed the ancient hula course taught by my mother. The ʻūniki was finalized by a lūʻau where we each did solo performances as well as some dances together. When I married, my husband didn’t approve of me dancing so I decided to teach because the hula was such a force in me that I could not stop doing it. It had been with me practically my entire life and it is very much a part of me. I’ve been teaching for over twenty years now. I kept my mother’s dancing style but I also allowed myself to grow as a kumu hula. I have composed many chants and have put my dancing styles and melodies to them based on the foundation I was given by my mother. This is the 1990s; the hula is evolving; it is still growing. Although I keep the dances I learned as they were, I don’t like to be stagnant. I teach my students everything that I can: the hula steps, how these hula steps got named, the mana‘o, and background so that they become better at what they’re doing because they understand the hula. I give them chanters’ training so that they can become ho‘opa‘a. I teach them oli so that they learn the difference between mele hula and olioli and kepakepa. I teach them about the ancient Hawaiian games and the reason the Hawaiians played them. We make our own hula implements and I teach them as many crafts as I know of. When something is new or very old, we research or learn from someone who knows. We’ve had formal language classes so there is a lot of Hawaiian spoken in my hālau. My understanding of a hula teacher is like a spring that shoots forth; someone that’s going to help expand, preserve, and protect. If they don’t have background skills, then they go nowhere. They’re just going to teach the same ten dances they know from somebody else. They have no way of going forward.
Peter William Kauaimaka Lonoae‘a
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At the age of twenty-one, Peter Lonoae‘a started teaching hula through workshops sponsored by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, he is presently a teacher at the James Campbell High School in ‘Ewa Beach. My first formal hula lessons were taken from Aunty Sally Wood Naluaʻi when I was attending college in 1969. She was teaching at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Keith Awai, Cy Bridges, Sunday Mariteragi and her sister Ellen Gay, and I were part of her select group that branched out from the night show. Other students came and went but the five of us were the steadies. Unfortunately after I graduated I left to teach school on Lānai. I didn’t know Aunty Sally would begin a training for an ‘ūniki. As fate would have it, that was her last ‘ūniki. I missed out. Aunty Sally’s style of dancing is a really straight back and dancing tall style which I try to teach my girls. We do bend but it’s not real low, not in the ‘auana anyway. When she taught us “Kaulīlua,” she said that it was Pua Ha‘aheo’s step for this particular move. She taught us specific motions for the girls and specific motions for the boys for “Kaulīlua.” She went into the kaona behind the words. It was interesting to learn things like that especially since I was still young. She had different drum beats but she used one specific style and that’s the one that l use. My knowledge broadened while attending the Church College of Hawaiʻi and when I participated in the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts program with Aunty Hoakalei Kamau‘u. I danced with her and her son Wailana. I taught at the workshop because they didn’t have too many male teachers at that time. Through these workshops l met other instructors like Aunty Eleanor Hiram Hoke, Uncle Henry Pa, and Lokalia Montgomery who I considered very interesting. It was a learning experience for me. I was a traveling resource teacher for the Department of Education. In 1976 I taught hula kahiko for Aunty Elaine Ka‘ōpūiki on Lānai. After one year on Lānai l taught music and performing arts to preschoolers up to the seventh graders on Moloka‘i for four years. From Moloka‘i I went to Hana where I taught the intermediate and high school students for six years. In 1987 I returned to O‘ahu and have been teaching at James Campbell High School ever since. My dancing style is a combination of Aunty Sally and John Kaʻimikaua. We wanted to perform Molokaʻi numbers at the Merrie Monarch Festival which were unique to Molokaʻi so we asked John Kaʻimikaua for chants. He introduced basic steps and I have incorporated some of his basic styles with the style that I already had. So it’s a mixture now. The students who are in my class either come from a hālau or have no hula knowledge at all. They just come to my class thinking it’s an easy class. A lot of my former students asked me to start a class for them but I always told them that my classes were their jumping off point. I still tell them that after you see what I have to offer and you want more, then seek out other teachers. I have never thought of opening a hālau because I did not ‘ūniki. I don’t feel proper. I do have hō'ike for my students. The requirements are almost the same. You have to create a chant, create motions, teach other students, and everything else except you will not ‘ūniki. There are so many young kumu hula that I don’t even know their names. The only time I see them is at competitions. Although they have Hawaiian roots, not all of them are Hawaiian even the ones I consider real good. Some of them don’t even have an ounce of Hawaiian blood in them but they’re so into the culture that they I have adopted it and it has become a part of them.
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.
Pearl Keawe Souza Pearl Souza, daughter of Pearl Keawe, teaches hula in the Kalihi Valley area on the island of O‘ahu. I believe we have just scratched the surface of hula kahiko. In the coming years the modern kumu will progress to an even deeper level than today and it will be done more openly. The halaus today are performing dances that I have never seen before and I find it fascinating and admirable that they have brought out so much. I began with my aunt Caroline Tuck when I was three-years-old. I learned basic footwork, how to bend our knees and stay flat on the floor. We then learned the hand motions and interpretation. I learned mostly ‘auwana from Caroline and she taught me that in the hula the story is everything. The motions are there only to project the story. I am trying to carry on Caroline’s definition of the hula in my teaching today. I went on to my mother when I turned ten and it was from her that I learned my ancient hula. Back then kahiko and ‘auwana were not used to define the hula. It was ancient and modern. My mother carried on exactly what Caroline Tuck had been teaching me. The basic principle throughout my training was not to be selfish with the knowledge that I was being given. Whatever I learned was to be shared and passed along to whoever wanted to learn. It had to be shared or it would be lost. After three years I joined Kent Ghirard’s Hula Nani troupe where I was fortunate to meet Pauline Kekahuna, Nāpua Stevens, and Vickie Iʻi Rodrigues. Kent taught me the commercial aspect of the hula. We performed for tourists and we projected to them the Mainland image of Hawai‘i. I saw the better part of him come out when we performed in front of local audiences and he performed as you would expect from a true Hawaiian. He was Haole but his love for the hula was genuine. He taught me that there was a time and place for everything and there are things that can and cannot be said in the hula world. I began to teach in 1976 because I felt as a dancer I was lacking something. I specialize right now with little children and I’ve found through dancing, through the hula, I can get across a message clearer than when I speak. To me, the hula has nothing to do with physical beauty, it is how you project your feelings and if those feelings are genuine.
Pattye Kealohalani Wright
Paltye Kealohalani Wright Born and raised in Missouri, Pattye Wright arrived in Hawaiʻi fifteen years ago and has taught the hula in Kailua, O‘ahu since 1973. Bella Richards has been my greatest influence. Her style epitomizes my ideal of hula - very low, very soft, very fluid. The highest compliment I can receive is for someone to approach me after watching my dancers perform and tell me they know that Bella was my kumu hula. When I arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1968 from the Midwest, my first hula experience was to see Beverly Noa dance. I was so moved by the experience that I decided I wanted to learn the hula. I studied informally with Carolyn Miller as an introduction to the dance for newcomers. Soon I realized my interests were much deeper and more compelling. At this point I saw a performance of the Kailua Madrigals and Bella was introduced as the teacher and choreographer of the group. I was so impressed that I telephoned her the next day to ask if she would take me into her classes. She informed me that she did not accept adults because ‘they don’t practice, they don’t remember, and they don’t have stamina.’ She preferred young people because they didn’t have as many distractions in their lives and because they had bodies that could more readily be molded. I kept pleading and begging until she finally consented to my attending the next class session. The first great accomplishment of my dancing career was merely surviving my early months with Bella. When 1 arrived that first morning she placed me in the front row with her senior dancers. We practiced from nine a. m. to three p. m. without a break. I was literally on my hands and knees when I got home. I felt so ignorant because of the gaffes and errors of protocol I made - mistakes that seemed so obvious to everyone else. These were things that a kumu and a haumāna know by osmosis but that I had to actually study and learn. I studied with Bella as a formal student until 1975. It was about this time while attending a hula workshop I was approached by Aunty Edith Kanakaʻole. Aunty Edith advised me that I must learn the language if I had a sincere desire to understand the hula. I spent three years at the University of Hawai‘i studying the Hawaiian language and related subjects. The new knowledge was a revelation for me. I felt like a light had been turned on in a dark room. It clarified many ambiguous, gray areas that had been perplexing to me. The importance of the ancient chants in a hula dancer’s education became very clear. Bella had chosen to teach very little kahiko. I now realized that my hula education was something like a house without a foundation. I wanted the structure that the kahiko could give me so I went back to Bella for her consent. She led me to Lani Kalama with whom I am still privileged to study under. It is Aunty Lani who has given me my foundation in the hula kahiko. In 1971 Bella permitted me to teach under her guidance and in 1975 she gave me her approval to open a studio of my own. I try to pass on to my haumāna what my kumu passed down to me — that the hula is a living form and you must share a little bit of your emotions and your past to make it live. Too many dancers do not learn the language. They dance their routines mechanically and they kill the life of the song and the life of the hula. When Aunty ‘Iolani (Luahine) danced, the whole mele seemed to be acted out inside of her. She projected her imagination and heart out into the audience and I rarely see that kind of emotion in kahiko today. My advice to the people of the Hawaiian community is to not take this culture and heritage for granted. Perhaps because I was brought up in another culture I look at the situation with a special concern. Too many people today assume that cultural resources like Bella will always be around to be appreciated and they are mistaken.
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.
Paleka Leina‘ala Mattos
Nā Kumu Hula Paleka Leina‘ala Mattos - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 78
In 1982 Paleka Leina‘ala Mattos established Hula Hālau ‘O Kamuela in honor of her uncle and mentor Samuel Nae‘ole. My roots of becoming a kumu hula began at the age of six-years- old. I studied under Hula master Sam Nae‘ole. He was my mother’s brother and I graduated from him in 1976. My uncle Sam studied the hula from various teachers where he had acquired a combination of different styles of hula. Although he was a hula teacher, it didn’t mean he stopped learning. He still had so much more to learn from the older people who knew more about hula. He put all this knowledge together and lie formed his own style. My ʻūniki ceremony was held in Waimanalo under a lūʻau tent. Some of the most prestigious people in hula today attended. Another girl was to ʻūniki as an alaka‘i and I as a kumu hula. The dressing ceremony for the ‘ūniki was done by my uncle. Prior to my ‘ūniki I had learned numerous oli, chants, and dances which I performed on the stage. It was a simple ceremony for us. My uncle said I didn’t have to go through all the other rituals because we were Catholics. Even today we respect the hula and the Hawaiian culture but I’ll go to church and say a little prayer before I go to the Merrie Monarch Festival. That was my uncle’s way and I do the same. Part of my style is my uncle’s but another part is my style. I stayed with Uncle Sam until he passed away in 1981. It was at his funeral that a lot of his students asked me to “take over.’ I said, “No, I’m not going to take over, but l might continue where Uncle left off.” So in 1982 I said to myself, “This is it, Paleka. Let’s do your thing. ’’ I first went into what is commonly known as “contemporary Hawaiian,” meaning that I started to jazz everything up. I thought this is what the people wanted. At the time I had come out full bloom, many hālau were jumping all over the stage doing fabulous fast- stepped kahiko. So there I was going wild; just like them. It was awesome to look at but it was not really hula. It took me a long time to realize that I must return to the basics where I originally started from. It was only a matter of time before I got that “contemporary” style out of my system. I remember going to my first competition. I had been teaching hula for only six months when I entered the Queen Liliʻuokalani Keiki Hula Competition. There I overheard someone say that Paleka was fabulous in Tahitian but she knew nothing about hula. I said to myself, “I’ll show you. Although my hālau came in third or fourth that first time, I was disappointed because the children were so good. To prove to myself that the children were good in hula, the following week I went to the hula competition in Maui and won first place in all divisions. I just knew hula was my calling. I can teach hula everyday for a hundred years. That’s how much I love it. My greatest accomplishment in hula is being able to teach the students who have a hard time learning to dance. Every child does not have t lie same learning ability. Hula teachers have to realize it and work at a slower pace. Some are not as quick as others. That’s where being patient comes in. I just know that I can make anyone love hula as much as I do and eventually teach them to dance this special art. Hula goes through periods of change like a circle of life. The style of hula changed from traditional to a more innovative and fancy style. It made the keiki come back to hula because it was exciting and fun. Today the students having learned to love the hula, have embraced tradition. Through this desire to learn and dance the hula, it made its circle and became traditional again. Hula will never lose its tradition as long as kumu like myself are teaching to children. We all will go through our little sporadic experimentation but we will always return. Right now I’m settled into a more traditional line. But who knows. Two years from now a hālau might come up bursting with something new and everybody will follow the train. 78 Paleka Leinaʻala Mattos
Nā Kumu Hula PaIani Kahala - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 44
The late Palani Kahala established the Kahala Foundation to perpetuate his original chants and dances. In January 1991 Palani Kahala presented his final performance as kumu hula of the Ladies of Kahanākealoha and the Gentlemen of Maluikeao. There are two styles of hula kahiko. There’s what I term as classical or traditional hula kahiko and then there is a contemporary styling of ancient hula. Traditional hula has been passed down by succeeding generations. For myself and other hula teachers, we should never change chants like "Kaulīlua," “‘Au‘aʻla,” “A Ko‘olau Au.” We should never try to attempt to re-do something as historically valuable as these dances. If it is the way it was performed, say, a hundred years ago, then it should be the same a hundred years from now. Yet in the same light, this generation of Hawaiians are a source of tradition. Like our ancestors, we share the same spirit of creativity. Things we create today will become the traditions of tomorrow. Composing mele are a means by which I can express the whole spectrum of human emotion. Some of my greatest moments of composing have come in times of personal strife. Times when I’m going through an emotional or physical crisis often lead to creative moments that swell inside. I find myself being very creative and wanting to write. I started hula at age seventeen while a student at Kamehameha Schools. My teachers were Robert Cazimero and Wayne Keahi Chang. They came to instruct the school’s Concert Clee Club. Someone came up with the novel idea to turn the training into a formal hālau so members of the group became part of the first men of Hālau Nā Kamalei. I stayed for three years learning hula. I’ve never ʻūniki in the formal sense, yet I’ve maintained an extensive background in Hawaiian culture having taken classes in Hawaiian language to speak proficiently. Included in my training are culture classes in high school and college. What has helped tremendously is the fact that I hail from Kahana, Oʻahu where remnants of Hawaiian culture still exist. In 1980 when I returned from serving as an Intelligence Analyst with the 307th Army Security Agency in Ludwigsburg, Germany, I had no plans to teach hula. I was actually planning to attend college to pursue a career in communications hut things changed. My aunt Verna Wilson encouraged me to teach a group of women and that was the beginning of my hālau. My students are my greatest accomplishments as a kumu hula. When I graduate my students, I expect them to do two things. First, they must develop a sense of discipline. Secondly, ha‘aha‘a or humility and compassion for others. If anything, these are the things that I try to instill in my teachings. As far as the term itself, kumu means teacher/source and of course, with hula it means hula source. There are those who might argue that a true kumu hula comes from a lineage of kumu hula. I say that is correct but there are some very important teachers in the hula world who don’t possess this particular hula genealogy. Their contributions far exceed many who have had that formal link with the past. In many ways these people should he respected and recognized for their works. They’ve earned the right to he called kumu by the amount of work and dedication they’ve put into it. I feel competition brings hula into the forefront of public attention. Performing in competitions has built my reputation. I’d be just another unknown had it not been for the exposure of the Merrie Monarch Festival and other competitions. I felt in the beginning, and I guess its my own immaturity, that winning was everything. At this point in my life, winning is not as important as enjoying what you do. There is a feeling of overwhelming joy to perform. That feeling is more important than the opinions of the competition judges. No one can take that joy away. No one can take away that feeling that you are a winner just for trying. A trophy is merely a symbol recognizing excellence and achievement but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do well. I think I have a definite style of hula. Nothing specific yet there are certain hula moves that can be attributed to me; certain concepts and ideas which I have helped to promote; things people would come back and say, “Hey, that’s very Palani Kahala. I don’t believe in originality. I merely think that what is labeled as original is a recombination of ideas that have been tested before. A good kumu hula takes the very best of what he’s learned and looks at it from another perspective. If that is originality, well, I’m guilty. I do it all the time. In developing style I watch, look, and listen — not only to hula but all forms of dance such as ballet, jazz, other ethnic dances, and I can see the ideas that they’ve generated. "When I graduate my students, I expect them to do two things. First, they must develop a sense of discipline. Secondly, ha ‘ahaʻa or humility and compassion for others. ” 44 Palani Kahala
Odelta NeSmith Born on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and raised in Kalihi, O‘ahu, Odetta NeSmith has taught on Kaua‘i for nineteen years. I think we have to appreciate that the hula has been passed down to us through the hundreds of years and that it already has been altered and changed during those hundreds of years. We should let the new kumu take their turn in trying to improve it. Maybe what they’re doing is not an improvement but they are recording the modern influences of their time and I cannot believe our ancestors did not do the same when the kahiko was passed to them. I became interested in the hula because my parents were entertainers. I was born on the Big Island but we left in 1940 before the war and we lived with my aunt in Kalihi. In 1941 we moved to Kāne‘ohe where my mother sent us to Eleanor Hiram Hoke who was teaching at the Kāne‘ohe Community Center next door to Honey’s Inn. Entertainers need dancers and I came from a big family of girls. My mother said she wasn’t about to beat the bushes looking for dancers when she had them right in the house. I was thirteen at the time I was sent to Eleanor and the transition between child and teenager was a rebellious time for me. I grew up ashamed of being Hawaiian. I didn’t know what I was because I certainly didn’t enjoy being Hawaiian. I was lost and my parents couldn’t even help me understand who I was because they were just as confused. My mother often told me about the confusion she went through growing up. At school she was forbidden to speak Hawaiian and at home she was forbidden to speak English. In order to try and save her children from that kind of confusion we were not taught Hawaiian. I studied kahiko and ‘auwana under Eleanor for two years and it was a settling process for me. Because we were musicians, Aunty Alice Nāmakelua was a constant visitor at our house and I studied hula ‘auwana informally under her between 1950 and 1954. My last kumu was Pearl Keawe who has been my greatest influence. She seemed to always have time for me. We were taught in small groups so I wasn’t a number or a space to her. I was Odetta. I arrived on Kaua‘i in 1960 and in 1964 the county needed a teacher and Margaret ‘ Aipōalani suggested I do it. I jumped at the chance because I wanted to continue dancing. I wanted to teach the Hawaiian kids to be involved with the hula with or without money. It offers them stability and an identity. I found my identity through the hula and because of that I’m not ashamed to say I’m a Hawaiian today. We Hawaiians cannot wait around for changes to happen, we can’t hang back and sit in our houses and dream. If we need information then we should go to the library and read a book. I would have taught the Hawaiian kids for free because I didn’t want to see them suffer through the inhibited, unsure, unstable world that I lived through.
Oddetta Kaohikukapulani Kinimaka-Alquiza
Nā Kumu Hula Oddetta Kaohikukapulani Kinimaka-Alquiza - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 58
Kapu Kinimaka-Alquiza began teaching in 1983 and is kumu hula of Nā Hula ‘O Kaohikukapulani in Kaua‘i. I first started hula at the age of five. I came from a very large family of sixteen children and as we grew up, hula was a part of our daily lives. As a young girl I really didn’t enjoy hula. I only did it because my sisters did it. Also during those small kid times when our parents told us to do something, there was no back talk from us kids. Besides when we’d perform, I got five dollars. That was enough for me to get moving. I stuck with it for many years and it sort of grew with me. I never thought however that I would he the one to teach. My first kumu hula was Aunty Lovey Apana. She would teach me and my sisters at her home in Wailua. She was full of energy and was very strict in her teachings. She would teach us kahiko, ‘auana, Maori, and a bit of Tahitian. I remember sitting on her front porch in her little hale near the river. She would always tell us stories of her experiences. I stayed with her until I was about eleven or twelve. She was a wonderful teacher, entertainer, and philosopher. Out of all of my sisters I was the worst dancer. Aunty Lovey used to think that I had two left feet. I remember Aunty Lovey’s sister Shalet calling me “deaf ear and blind eye” because I had the hardest time following instructions. I’m amazed I lasted through all of that as a young girl because today I can remember many of my childhood days as a young dancer. I then went to Uncle Joe Kahaulelio. He was a master chanter as well as an entertainer and choreographer. He taught hula ‘auana and kahiko and was very versatile in other Polynesian dances. Like Aunty Lovey, his style was very traditional: the old style with puffed ‘uwehe, very low, simple, and beautiful. However his ‘auana style was elegant, upright, and proud. I remained with Uncle Joe for many years until I got married and had my children. It was at that time I stopped to raise my family. When I was ready to start again I found out that he had moved to the mainland. I felt lost without him. Many of my hula sisters shared the same feelings. In 1982 I was invited to participate as a dancer in the Merrie Monarch Festival with another Kaua‘i group. I would bring my two-year-old daughter to rehearsals and as she watched us from the back, she would stand up and imitate us as we were dancing. I was impressed with her comprehension, coordination, rhythm, and timing. I knew I had to find a hālau for her. So the search began. I wanted to find her a kumu hula that taught a similar style to Uncle Joe. There wasn’t anyone that I felt comfortable to send her to so my husband asked me, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve done this just about all your life; learning from great teachers of the hula. Go and seek their permission and blessings.” So it was then that I went to express my desire to teach and hopefully to receive the blessings and permission from my kumu hula. Scared to go alone I begged my sister Kaniu to go with me. To O'ahu we went where Uncle Joe, being my last kumu, was visiting with Gramma Woodward. After dinner and a few drinks I finally had the courage to ask him. Being able to teach hula was very important to me. Hoping for him to say yes but prepared for the worst, I finally asked him. And when l asked him if it would be all right to continue his teachings in hula and the culture, he looked me straight in my eyes, put his hand on my cheek and lie said, “What took you so long? I knew you were going to be the teacher. I had tears in my eyes and happiness in my heart. He wished me well and sent me away with his blessings. I knew in my heart that whatever I do, I will do in his name as well as my first kumu hula Aunty Lovey. I started commuting back and forth from Kaua‘i to Oʻahu to visit with Uncle Joe at his home where he would teach me chant and dance. He wasn’t well but he made time to see me. I would call him up for advice and guidance because I didn’t want to do the wrong thing or offend anyone by doing something that was not proper. Soon after on August 6, 1983 I started my first class in my garage at my home in Hanapepe with twenty students. Uncle Joe advised me to stay away from certain rituals to protect myself and my family. At that time I did not fully understand what he meant. I stressed to him that I would like to go into chants because I felt that they are the roots of our culture. He told me to take my steps very carefully and to watch what types of chants I chose. I respected his advice and moved on. Besides Aunty Lovey and Uncle Joe, other kumu hula who have touched my life with their knowledge are kumu hula Palani Kahala who introduced me to an innovative kind of hula kahiko, and Kepa Maly and Pōhaku Nishimitsu who shared with me their traditional knowledge of hula and the Hawaiian culture. They are traditional, simple, and beautiful in their dancing and teachings. I feel most blessed to have had these great people share their lives with me. For it is their knowledge that I will keep with me and share with my students in hopes that many of them will choose to continue to pass on this wonderful tradition of the hula. My greatest accomplishment as a teacher is being able to develop a great sense of patience in myself so I may be able to understand others in their times of difficulty. I think my dancing style comes from a variety of kumu hula but basically it reflects the styles of Aunty Lovey and Uncle Joe. We as students can learn from our kumu hula and duplicate their teaching or their style of dance. When it comes to expressing ourselves, our expression comes from within ourselves. My hula career is dedicated to my kumu hula Uncle Joe Kahaulelio and Aunty Lovey Apana for their wonderful thoughts of wanting me to continue their teachings. They gave unselfishly of their time and love to me. I think the hula today has changed a lot; hula has become very competitive. Some feel it’s okay and others don’t. As for me the love of hula must remain in our hearts in order for its growth to flourish. “We as students can learn from our kumu hula and duplicate their teaching or their style of dance. When it conies to expressing ourselves, our expression conies from within ourselves."
Nina Boyd Maxwell Nina Maxwell taught hula for the past nineteen years and is the kumu hula of the Pukalani Hula Hale in Maui. When I was young I was always nagging my father to let me learn the hula. He bought me a piano instead. I learned the piano but I kept nagging him. In the late 1930s and ’40s, hula was in a bad state of affairs and was not really respected. My grandmother was a lady-in-waiting for Lili‘uokalani so my father had seen the culture change tremendously. I don’t think he wanted me involved with hula because he had been so pained by the changes in the culture. Finally he took me to Elizabeth Lum Ho who was from the “old school”. There was no funny business in her class and my father was hoping the strict regimen would make me quit. Mrs. Lum Ho taught at home in Wailuku and she would begin the class by singing a mele. She would then tell you the story of the mele and then interpret the story with the dance. If she felt you should learn the entire mele then you would stay the entire day and if it took you three months to learn that one mele, you would be assigned that same mele for three months. Mrs. Lum Ho taught me traditional and modern hula and I studied under her for five years. After I graduated from Mrs. Lum Ho, she left Maui for O‘ahu and I went on to Emma Sharpe who trained me in hula ‘auwana. My kumu never really differed in their teaching style. Everything had to be perfect especially the enunciation and pronunciation of the mele. The knowledge was taught by constant repetition and we were expected to retain everything simply by watching and listening. Aunty Emma held her classes in a hall in back of the old Wailuku Gym. I was with Aunty Emma for four years and I was trained informally during this time by Aunty ‘Iolani Luahine in olioli. In 1964 my husband Charlie encouraged me to open a halau, so with the permission of Aunty Emma I began to teach on Maui. I wanted to teach because the hula is the record of Hawaii’s cultural past and the key to the mystery and richness of our islands. This is what I wanted to pass on to another generation of people of all ethnic backgrounds. The great battle that is going on today is, “Are we teaching and learning the traditional hula for the sake of performance or the sake of knowledge?” We don’t know the answer because there is a great void in the knowledge of our culture. But I can’t help but feel hopeful because I feel we are filling this void slowly but surely. A handful of resources are left to teach us and the “Hawaiian Renaissance” has helped to put the puzzle back a little bit more. We Hawaiians have gone through great changes in our recent history. Many of us were off- balanced and confused but we’ve re-awakened and regained our balance and I think the young Hawaiians of today are proud of who they are.
Nā Kumu Hula Nathan Napoka - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 87
Nathan Napoka, currently employed by the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, has been teaching since 1975. Hula has been in my family for generations. My great-great-grandmother was Ke'ele-hiwa Napoka, a famous court dancer from Maui who went to Kā'u to perform. Manuel Silva, a relative of my grandmother, learned from Ke‘elehiwa Napoka. My grandmother’s sister Elizabeth Kalehuawehe Chun Ling studied with Kumanaiwa who was a famous hula master on Maui. It is said that my family from that side of Maui performed what was called the Haleakalā dances which were done for Pele because she lived in Haleakalā up until very recent times. Everyone thinks of the Pele dances as coming from the big Island but there is a long tradition of Pele dances on Maui where she was still erupting in the 1700s. These dances were being performed until the 1900s. I did not formally study hula until I returned to Hawaiʻi from college in 1972. At that time I was enrolled at the East-West Center as the Hawaiian Renaissance was just starting. Aunty Edith McKinzie was a student with me at the University of Hawaiʻi and she told me about the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts’ hula classes. Aunty Hoakalei Kamau‘u was the director of the program and Aunty Edith was teaching the beginning men’s class. After one semester with Aunty Edith, I moved into Aunty Hoakalei’s classes and I’ve been with her ever since. I studied with Aunty Hoakalei with the understanding that she was going to prepare me to become a teacher. I was soon teaching all the beginning men’s classes for Aunty Hoakalei. I learned to be a ho‘opa‘a by chanting while sitting in the back of the advanced class. Aunty was in the front showing us how to dance and I followed. We also had a special class for the teachers to learn to oli. I was coaxed into teaching. I was interested but I was afraid to teach. Through Aunty Hoakalei I learned that there is a whole way that you learn to become a teacher just like you learn to become a dancer or a chanter. For that reason I was very fortunate that she was (here to help me make a smooth transition from being a student to eventually running the class. She would come in and critique my teaching front the back and guide me through my classes. When she knew that I wasnʻt doing so well or when I was down emotionally, she’d come in and move me through the class. I had her guidance and her very strong presence to support me. That really gave me the confidence to teach: otherwise I would have never taught. I later travelled throughout the state with Aunty ʻIolani Luahine and Aunty Hoakalei for about three and a half years with the Artist in the Schools program. I was very fortunate to have spent time with Aunty ‘Io. Aunty Hoakalei said only two men have ever danced professionally with Aunty ʻIo. I was one of the two. The other was Joseph Kahaulelio. There was a part of our program where I danced alone so that Aunty ʻIo could change clothes and then there was a part where Aunty ʻIo and I danced together. Although Aunty ʻIo wasn’t actually teaching me, we were doing the same motions because it was all coming from the same source. Aunty ʻIo was Aunty Hoakalei’s teacher. Aunty Hoakalei doesn’t ʻūniki. Aunty Hoakalei didn’t ‘ūniki from Aunty ʻIo. ‘Ūniki is something for those people who are deep into the Hawaiian gods. In order to go through a formal graduation ceremony, you have to keep the gods in an altar. In order to keep the gods in an altar, you have to, what the Hawaiians say, “feed the gods" and that meant that you have to be a non-Christian. You cannot feed the Hawaiian gods today and forget about them tomorrow. If you dedicate your life to those gods, yon have to keep them for your whole life and not only when you want to dance hula. If you don’t keep them, they turn on you. Spiritually, they devour you. ‘Ūniki today is different than ‘ūniki yesterday. For people who are in traditional hula, a traditional ‘ūniki is nearly impossible because of the kapu system that existed when ‘ūniki was originally practiced. Today it has taken on a different meaning. Rather than the really strict traditional ceremony, it means a recital or a kind of graduation from one level to another. Like all healthy cultures, our culture is evolving. My reason for dancing has always been to perpetuate these dances and to keep the culture alive. I’ve been very fortunate that my job has kept me financially secure so that I have never had to use my hula to make money. My hula has been something very special. It’s my identity; it’s my culture; it’s my expression. Once in a while my work and hula have crossed paths. One such instance led me to Pat Bacon. Aunty Pat and I worked on indexing mele at the Bishop Museum for two years. During that time I was fortunate to learn more about ancient mele as well as my own hula background since Aunty Pat learned from Keahi Luahine, Aunty Hoakalei’s kupuna who was Aunty ‘Io’s hānai mother and teacher. Aunty Pat has generously given her time and brownies toward my development. I think the hula has changed but I don’t think change is necessarily bad. The only thing that I see that’s bad is if we confuse our traditional hula with modern hula and if we don’t keep the classical hula and the contemporary hula separate. We have to safeguard what is traditional. To me hula kahiko is the classics; the motions and the voice that have been passed on from one generation to another, through one human being touching another human being. If you ask most kumu hula today what they have in their repertoire that’s traditional, most of them don’t have much. They find the words in the archives and they make up the motions and the tune. Although it’s not bad, everyone should have some exposure to where they have come from as a people; where we have come as Hawaiians over all these millenniums of time. Nānā I Nā Loea Hula 87
Nā Kumu Hula Namahana Kalama-Panui - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 48
Namahana Kalama-Pānui is a Hawaiian Studies teacher for the Department of Education, Central District on O‘ahu. She also commutes to Maui where she devotes her time to teach the children of Hāna. When I view my life and the blessings that I’ve received, I realize that I have been nurtured. influenced, inspired, and guided by the Divine, by family, by kumu, by children, and by friends. I am the fruit of their love and I am kumu thanks to all of them. I was born in Guam and lived in a community called the Hawaiian Village. We were of varied ethnic backgrounds but all originally from Hawai‘i. Although we grew up removed from Hawaiʻi, we were not removed from the Hawaiian lifestyle. We shared wonderful experiences together that instilled within me the value of family. While in Guam my parents encouraged Hawaiian ways and I was enrolled in hula. Here I learned to do hula for the love of hula. My love has never ceased. It has sustained me and it continues to bring blessings into my life. Our family moved back to Hawaii when I was eight and my mother saw to it that my hula training continued. She took me to Alicia Keolahou Smith who was teaching at the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) on Richards Street. I walked from Nuʻuanu and Kuakini where we lived to the Y and all the way back. We had no car and money was not used for bus fare. Later when I started to earn my own money, the bus ride was a welcomed treat. Keolahou was firm, yet kind; passionate and compassionate; disciplined, loving and respectful. There was an established order to adhere to and standards to strive for and maintain. I grew to love and respect this tradition, this style, and this kumu. In many ways Keolahou’s teachings were like my parents’ teachings and the hālau became like my home and family. Family was everything in my upbringing. My actions, choices, and decisions were reflections of my family. Some may say decisions made in childhood are short-lived but for me they weren’t. I remember clearly that at age ten, I had decided hula would be my life and I would be a hula teacher. My mother wanted me to be happy; my father wanted me to be a minister. Easier said than done! I believe through the guiding light of my family, of my kumu, of others, and of God, I can say now: I am kumu, I do minister to my students and their families, and I am happy. Blessings came in many forms. At one point in my life I had to leave hula due to a family crisis. Father was working in Guam and Mother was trying to raise the family in Hawaiʻi. Keolahou came to our home and offered to take responsibility for my hula training and my life. My mother entrusted her child into the care of another as a keiki ho‘okama. Although young I understood and a deeper loyalty and love grew for both my mother and Keolahou. In the years that followed this love and loyalty would swell like a spring, continually renewing my spirit and giving me courage to persevere. Within a thirty-year span of my life Keolahou became my teacher, provider, counselor, minister, guide, mother, and friend. Little did I realize the breadth and depth of this tradition. As the years passed my parents resettled in Guam and I stayed in Hawai‘i, first as a boarder at school, then with ‘ohana, and eventually on my own. As the training in ‘ōlapa, oli, ho‘opa‘a, language, and teaching continued, I began to embrace the beauty of this style and tradition, to understand its principles, to appreciate its discipline, and to see the presence of God in hula. During these years Keolahou often sent me to workshops to learn from other masters. She also brought kumu and artisans into the hālau. It was fascinating to experience the diversity of hula and other Hawaiian traditions; yet each was universal in their love, respect, devotion, and dedication. I began to view hula as a way of life. I have been enriched, enlightened, and blessed by what I’ve learned through hula. My training and my rights of passage to become kumu has been spiritual as well as physical. However the spiritual part remains private. What I can share is that hula has taught me about God and God has taught me about hula. I have learned to view the Universe as community, the Earth as home, and all life forms as family. I’ve learned to be an instrument of God’s teachings and do so through ancestral tradition. Most importantly I have received the blessings of God and my kumu. Just as God guided my training, God has guided my teaching. I believe the creation of Nā Mamoaliʻi ō Kaʻuiki was inspired by God. Its name was given in a dream as a gift on my birthday. When I awoke I was inspired to write it in the form of a mele. In its purest form the mele and dream was a call to return to my ancestral homeland and emerge anew. A few years later I was offered a teaching position at Hāna School. Eventually Nā Mamoaliʻi ō Kaʻuiki was born. Our name has many levels of meaning and interpretation. These are shared when one is prepared to receive it, for understanding comes through experience. From its beginning other dreams, visions, mele, and scriptures have followed and have guided our direction. The hālau continues to evolve as a learning center for those who wish to build a sound foundation on God and ancestral tradition. In today’s society success is often viewed by the rewards one receives. My reward has always been the love of children. Our success comes when the students live by the traditions and values taught to them and when they are true to God, themselves, and each other. If my students and their families continue to remember the blessings of life, give thanks for these blessings, and renew the heart, then my life will have been well spent. The hālau and its ‘ohana has enjoyed fifteen blessed years. There were high and low times and none are judged as good or bad but as natural. For the past ten years Iʻve commuted weekly and I do so out of love. I am often asked if I will stop. My answer remains the same; “It is God’s will whether I continue or not. God will always provide; right now it is through me. I remain thankful.” “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify Father which is heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
Naleialoha Napaepae-Kunewa
Nā Kumu Hula Naleialoha Napaepae-Kunewa - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 84
Naleialoha Napaepae-Kunewa is the executive director of Kahua Na‘au A‘o Ma Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau NHP. Inc. and is the kumu hula of Hālau o Kaleiho'ohie o Kona. Mrs. Lokalia Montgomery was my only hula teacher. She was the curator of the Hulihe‘e Palace in Kona from 1951 to 1971 and my mom worked there. She would take me to Mrs. Montgomery’s house located next to the Palace on Saturdays for hula class. In keeping with tradition the teacher selected the student and Mrs. Montgomery chose me. I started when I was seven and stayed with her until she retired in 1971. I was very fortunate. Mrs. Montgomery would sit with me at her dining room table. She would sit at one end and I would be on the other. The only instruments I was allowed to use were the ka lā‘au and ʻiliʻili. “Kū Ka Punohu,” “Kona Kai ‘Opua,” and “‘Aihea ‘O Kalani” were my first dances. All the rhythms were done on the dining room table without ipu or pahu. She never danced. I followed her directions and performed accordingly. Mrs. Montgomery was very knowledgeable in knowing what best suited each person. She didn’t have set standards that you had to learn this and that by the first year. She believed whatever a student was able to comprehend, that’s what she would teach. She really enjoyed working on a one-to-one basis. It was a relaxed but serious situation and it was easy for me to sit with her for long periods at a time. I felt very comfortable with her. Although stern she was a kind and gentle-hearted person. Sometimes we would just sit and talk story. I remember l had my ‘ūniki at twelve years of age. It was held on the Palace grounds. The preparation included red fish and sweet potatoes. She told me not to eat the night before. I arrived before sunrise at her house and stayed with her all day. I napped on her lanai and after I awoke, we reviewed the ceremony. I ate everything she served me and I performed for her and her kumu Mary Kawena Pukui. There was an evening celebration, and I participated in a week long performance at the Palace. In my hālau I teach using Mrs. Montgomery’s method of teaching the steps, hand gestures, and voice. I've kept traditional hula such as “Hole Waimea,” “Kaulīlua I Ke Aim O Wai‘ale‘ale,” “‘Au‘a Ia,” “A Ko‘olau Au” exactly as I learned them. I have incorporated her teaching with original compositions and traditional mele learned later on. I remain true to Mrs. Montgomery’s style. I am a firm believer that I am a carrier of the exclusive style of Mrs. Montgomery and her teachers. Whatever she taught me I keep the same. Hula is a part of me. Hula is Kanaka Maoli. I am Kanaka Maoli therefore I am hula. 84 Naleialoha Napaepae-Kunewa
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.
Minerva Kalauhiwaokalani Pang
Nā Kumu Hula Minerva Kalauhiwaokalani Pang - Nānā I Nā Loea Hula Volume 2 Page 94
Minerva Pang has been teaching hula in her home since 1958 and presently works as a kupuna in the Pearl City area. I’ve always loved dancing especially the hula. My grandfather wanted me to study instead of dance because he said hula will not take me anywhere. So I used to hide to take hula lessons. My cousin taught me the hula when I was three-years- old. At age seven I took hula ‘auana from Rose Kuamo‘o whenever I visited Hilo. I took two summers from her while living in Kaʻu. When I moved to Honolulu, I took from my kumu hula Emma Moniz. She taught me hula ‘auana and a lot of implement numbers. The kahiko I learned was more modern, like dances about King Kalākaua and Queen Lili'uokalani. As a student my goal was to take hula from Aunty Emma for two years and get a certificate to graduate. I had to learn the language, the dance, and get a certificate if I wanted to become a teacher. You needed to understand the Hawaiian words and the interpretation of the mele to he able to create your own hula. Aunty Emma said it would take years hut it was necessary to learn the language. I got my certificate at my ʻūniki in 1945. Before I started to teach hula, I thought I needed to take more dancing so I took children’s hula from Kuulei Stibbard. I also took private lessons from Puanani Alama and learned some implement numbers and other hula ‘auana from George Nā‘ope. At first I taught my own children and then my neighbors’ children. I felt that if they could learn from me, I could teach others. Then my friends came and soon I had over twenty children and it grew from that. I taught for five years before I had my first recital. I used to have a couple hundred children but now my class is smaller because I am in the kupuna program and I have less time. I call myself a hula teacher but kumu has the same meaning. I teach old Hawaiian songs about places, islands, love, and songs that were written before the children were born so they can learn about them. Some of our young teachers are not ready. But I cannot say much because when I opened my studio, I was very new. Everybody learns from their mistakes and improves by learning all the time. Definitely the hula of today is different. The steps of today are faster especially the kahiko. Traditional hula today is too perfect not like I used to know, simple with feeling. Today’s children have different ideas and sometimes they get easily bored with the old ways. So to keep them interested, you have to create new ideas. 94 Minerva Kalauhiwaokalani Pang