31 Oct Coming Out of the Shadow of Colonialism, Hula Today is Experiencing a Renaissance
In a flowing blue-green gown, her arms bare, her long hair swept up elegantly and encircled with blossoms, Kayli Ka‘iulani Carr confidently took the stage at the 2016 Miss Aloha Hula contest in Hilo, Hawai‘i. This was the modern portion of a high-pressure contest, and she danced to the aching melody of “Ka Makani Ka‘ili Aloha,” which tells a story of a heartbroken lover who summons a magical, “love-snatching” wind to recapture the heart of his beloved. Carr dazzled the judges, the audience and the social media world.
In the traditional portion, she performed “Eō Keōpuolani Kauhiakama,” a dance celebrating the highest-ranking wife of King Kamehameha I. Draped in volumes of gold cotton stamped with scarlet and black patterns, she opened with an oli kepakepa, a rapid-fire, conversational chant.
“It’s really fast and really long, and you have to get a lot of words in at one time; then comes the challenge of having emotion with those words,” Carr told the Honolulu Star Advertiser after her win. “Not just speaking fast, but speaking with a purpose.”
The video of Carr’s performance went viral, and if you want a taste of hula today, you need go no further than the YouTube clip. Forget Hollywood images of lithe women in coconut bras and grass skirts. Forget the made-for-tourists Kodak Hula Show in Waikiki, which provided one version of hula for 65 years before shutting down in 2002. And forget “The Hukilau,” the hapa haole, or half-English hula, that is commonly trotted out at commercial luaus.
The Essence of Hula
Real hula is primal, archetypal, esoteric and ever- evolving. And it’s now shared digitally all over the world. This is a good thing, because it helps authentic hula spread, not just via more hula schools (called “hālau hula”), but also through conferences, theatrical performances and festivals in the 50th state, the continental U.S. and Japan. You can find performances at Wolf Trap, Carnegie Hall and the National Museum of the American Indian. And even at the most touristy venues, you can witness stunning hula practitioners like Carr, who has danced in the luau at O‘ahu’s Sea Life Park.
The Miss Aloha Hula contest is just one event at the Super Bowl of Hawaiian dance, the 59-year-old Merrie Monarch Hula Festival. Usually held the week after Easter, the Merrie Monarch attracts thousands of spectators for its acclaimed hula competition, Hawaiian arts fair, hula shows and grand parade through Hilo. Many more watch the event from afar, as it is streamed live on the web. And still more follow it on social media.
At competitions, schools of traditional dance compete in two major categories: Hula kahiko (“ancient dance”) features powerful movements and rough percussion; performers adorn themselves with skirts made of bark cloth or ti leaves and with garlands made of flowers, ferns, nut and shells. Hula ‘auana (“wandering hula”) is the lyrical, graceful style danced to the music of guitars and ukuleles; costumes range from the long skirts and high-neck blouses of the Victorian era to the jeans, T-shirts and backward baseball caps of today.
Yet as exciting—and affirming—as contests like the Merrie Monarch are, many hula practitioners avoid them. Some even see the competitions as distorting hula by placing undue emphasis on crowd-pleasing poses and memorable attire.
Rejecting Colonialism
The “Merrie Monarch” in the title is King David Kalākaua, who revived the ancient art of hula during the 1880s. “Hula is the language of the heart and therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people,” Kalākaua once said. In ancient Hawai‘i, hula expressed the intimate relationship between man and nature, the everyday and the divine. Humans were siblings to plants, and all things possessed spiritual presence, or mana. One could talk directly to the winds—or swim with fish and be among departed relatives.
To symbolize their relationship with nature, dancers wore ornaments crafted from the natural world. But it was words that defined the dance. Hula was the history book of a people without a written language. Chants ranged from sacred prayers and encomiums to chiefs, to love ballads, to odes to favorite places. Then there were the mele ma‘i, or “procreation chants,” which celebrated—indeed encouraged—unbridled eroticism.
It was the hula ma‘i that troubled the missionaries who arrived from New England in 1820, eager to spread the word of their god—and to dominate island politics, commerce and culture. They quickly denounced the hula as heathen. But after a 50-year dormancy, Kalākaua elevated the hula, hoping it would shore up a culture battered by disease and colonialism. He and others wrote new Hawaiian poetry and arranged it into stanzas, melodies and tempos (including waltz and polka). String instruments and even piano were enlisted to soften Hawaiian percussion, like gourd drums, feather-decorated gourd rattles, split-bamboo rattles, sticks and stone castanets.
Kalākaua couldn’t have guessed that hula’s domain would widen so dramatically. It became a key part of the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, as Native Hawaiians sought not just to restore Hawaiian culture but also reanimate it. By the end of the 20th century, hula would claim pride of place alongside hip hop, Cajun, tango and other popular forms of world music and dance across the U.S.
Movement as a Message
Some hula masters are experimenting with the form itself, choreographing dances to nontraditional music, say, or creating longer dramas that address contemporary issues, like AIDS and immigration. “Salva Mea,” an iconic excerpt of the larger work “The Natives Are Restless,” by Patrick Makuakāne, a kumu hula (master hula teacher) based in San Francisco, takes on the brutal colonialism of the missionaries.
Read the full article at https://www.dancemagazine.com/hula-today