On Wednesday, 20 Americans, all anonymously nominated, were recognized by the MacArthur Foundation with $800,000 fellowships often referred to as the “genius” award.
Patrick Makuakane, a hula choreographer in San Francisco, was at the Burning Man festival when he received a text from someone who claimed to be from the MacArthur Foundation and had been trying to reach him. The spotty cell service in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada made Makuakane miss the calls, and he did not understand why he was being contacted.
“Finally, I kind of pieced it together,” he said. “It’s pretty spectacular.”
Makuakane is part of a new class of 20 MacArthur Fellows that includes a U.S. poet laureate, a composer, a hydroclimatologist studying the impact of global warming and a lawyer who founded an organization dedicated to preserving American democracy.
Each year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gives fellowships to a select group of writers, artists, social scientists, entrepreneurs and other individuals in a variety of fields. The fellowship is “intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual and professional inclinations,” and comes with a $800,000 stipend, according to the foundation’s website.
The fellows, who were announced on Wednesday, were nominated by a constantly changing pool of anonymous people and then recommended by an independent selection committee to the foundation’s president and board of directors. Since 1981, more than a thousand people have received a MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially known as the “genius” award.
Hailing from across the United States, the fellows are engaged in a wide variety of creative and intellectual work. María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who is based in Nashville, is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the history of the Caribbean through multimedia installations. Lucy Hutyra, a professor at Boston University, investigates the impacts of urbanization on the carbon cycle.
Because of the anonymous selection process, many of the fellows were, like Makuakane, astonished to hear they had been chosen.
Ada Limón, who is the U.S. poet laureate, had just arrived home in Kentucky after seeing her 98-year-old grandmother die. She had been receiving calls from an unknown number and assumed they had something to do with the memorial service.
The MacArthur Fellowship or the “genius grant” is one of the most prestigious prizes in the country. Two Bay Area residents were picked this year and are given $800k to spend however they want. Raj Mathai speaks with San Francisco resident Patrick Makuakāne on this.
Among the 20 winners of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship announced Wednesday were scientists, engineers, composers, legal scholars—and one hula dancer. Patrick Makuakāne, a 62-year-old kumu hula, or master teacher, lives in San Francisco and runs the hula school and company Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu, which blends classical hula dance with modern and contemporary music and theatrical flair. The citation on Makuakāne’s MacArthur—often referred to as a genius grant—calls him a “cultural preservationist,” but in a lively conversation just hours after the announcement, he revealed himself to be something different: an artist working not to preserve his culture in amber, but to innovate and transform it into something new. I spoke with him about how hula portrays masculinity, his MacArthur guilt, and what he’ll do with his $800,000 award. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Dan Kois: What a day it’s been for you. Have you heard from a million people asking if they have to call you a genius now?
Patrick Makuakāne: I’ve gotten a lot of calls. You know, I am living my little slice of the world in San Francisco doing hula—I get some attention, but it’s all local attention. To suddenly be on this national level is pretty crazy! And it comes with an immense amount of responsibility. I feel joy, and responsibility, and guilt.
Why guilt?
To be honest, I was speaking with a Native American and an African American who are in the class with me, and all of us expressed this intense amount of guilt. You know, we’re artists who are entrenched in our community. We recognize that it’s the community that supported us and led us to this award. And there are so many outstanding people who are doing fantastic work in the community, and you’re like, “Why do I get recognized?” But there you are, Blanche. Stop crying about it, and start making stuff.
For many mainlanders, hula is just something they encounter in tiki bars or on TV.
They have no idea what it truly represents! I’m an evangelist about hula. Hula is such an important, immersive, expansive part of our culture. It helped to bring the culture back from extinction in the ’70s, during the Hawaiian Renaissance. Everybody says it was music and wayfaring, and I say boldly that it was hula that did it. I’m biased, but you can be biased and right at the same time! Many people my age found a way to express their native identity through hula. That opens the door to so many aspects of our culture that was closed before. We can be proud to say we’re Hawaiian.
It gives you a language to speak about your origins.
Because hula is a language. King Kalākaua, who was king from 1874 to 1891, said, “Hula is the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.” I roll my eyes at that sometimes—I’m not mocking the king, but people say it all the time, it’s like, “Find a new line.” But it’s true! It gives so many of us life.
I think people don’t understand what a difference there is between watching it and doing it.
Yes! Take a hula class, and it’s really a class of culture. Dance is like 40 percent of it. Whenever I teach a new class, the very first day, we just sit in an ’ai ha’a—that’s basically like a plié stance in ballet—and we just go through language, teaching the new words and the new calls in Hawaiian. And I know they’re thinking, What the fuck is this? I came to do a dance class!
You’ve developed what you call a unique form of hula, “hula mua.” How does this differ from traditional hula?
A lot of people think that hula tells a story. But really, the poetry, the song, the chant, those are the main vehicle of expression. It’s the song that tells the story. Here in San Francisco, Hawaiian-language songs and chants are the major part of the repertory. But when I do it in English, people get it! “Oh—the words match the motion!” And so people are understanding it, rather than: You sit your ass out in the audience, and we’ll be on stage, and the dance may seem pretty to you, but it has no meaning.
One of our signature pieces is “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” That song is a perfect example of how Hawaiian songs are written. It tells you about a special location you live in. It gives you the environmental characteristics of that place, that explain why it’s unique. And then you add a love interest who’s specific to that location. Whenever we dance that, people just get it, the connection between place, environment, movement, love.
Our ancestors were innovative! We can be innovative,too.
— Patrick Makuakāne
There’s this guy who comes up to me, he moved here from Hawai’i, he’s gay, and when we do that song, he says, “Coming to San Francisco as a gay man, that song says everything!” I’m like, “I get you, bro.” Dancing hula is the best way to demonstrate your aloha for the place you love.
You recently created a show called Māhū, about gender fluidity in Hawaiian culture. What was your inspiration for that?
I have all these incredibly talented friends who are māhū! It was 2020, and transgender people were in the news, with Trump and the military and, you know—it was the conversation that was happening. I wanted to do a show with my transgender friends who are artists—not to have them onstage rallying their flag, but to have them share their talent, their singing, their dancing. How can you deny these amazing people a seat at the table when you’ve seen their artistry?
A big congratulations to Kumu hula Patrick Makuakane. He’s one of twenty people from around the country this year to win a prestigious MacArthur Foundation genius grant.
When Makuakane first got a text to call the MacArthur Foundation last month, he was stuck in the mud at Burning Man for days with no cell phone service.
But he would later return home — and learn that he had been awarded $800,000 to continue his work, however he sees fit.
Patrick Makuakāne is a kumu hula, cultural preservationist, and 2023 MacArthur Fellow blending traditional hula with contemporary music and movements to forge a unique form of hula—hula mua. #MacFellow
With members of his community-centered dance company, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, Patrick uplifts Hawaiian culture, ancestral knowledge, and history.
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“I think of this award as an award for hula, because a lot of people have no idea what it is,” Makuakane told the Washington Post. “They think it’s a simple-minded dance done in a grass skirt. But it has really profound effects on many people I know. For many of us, hula is life.”
Blending traditional hula with contemporary music and movements and uplifting Hawaiian culture and history.
About Patrick’s Work
Patrick Makuakāne is a kumu hula (master teacher) and cultural preservationist infusing traditional hula with fresh interpretations and establishing new routes for transmitting and preserving Hawaiian cultural heritage. Makuakāne grounds his work in the traditions, ancestral knowledge, and history of Hawaiʻi as it has been passed down to him by other kumu. He has forged his own unique form of hula—hula mua, or hula that evolves—by blending traditional hula movements, chants, and songs with contemporary music, staging, and subject matter.
Since 1985, Makuakāne and his San Francisco-based dance company, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, have performed both traditional hula pieces and Makuakāne’s original works in the hula mua style. He often uses English-language lyrics, popular music, and contemporary dress and theatrical staging. His long-form, narrative performances challenge stereotypes and explore past and present-day threats to Native Hawaiian people and culture. The Natives Are Restless (1996) is a history of colonialism in and the present occupation of Hawai’i, including the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and Native Hawaiians’ demand for sovereignty. “Salva Mea,” a frantic, collective dance underscored by progressive house music, depicts the devastation Christian missionaries wrought in the nineteenth century. Makuakāne works to preserve Hawaiian language, history, and culture through both his choreography and hālau (school), which offers classes for adults and children. He was inspired to create Ka Leo Kānaka,The Voice of the People, in 2013 when the hālauparticipated in a project to digitize Hawaiian-language newspapers. The work sets stories about twentieth-century Hawai’i to various genres of music from throughout the century.
Recently, Makuakāne and his company collaborated with Hawaiian transgender artists to create the full-length work, MĀHŪ (2022). The work explores and celebrates the role of gender fluidity in Hawaiian culture and seeks to restore the honor conferred upon transgender people in ancient Hawaiʻi. By balancing traditional hula with modern innovations, Makuakāne ensures that this vital component of ancestral culture continues to endure and thrive for future generations.
Biography
Patrick Makuakāne studied hula with the kumu hula (master teachers) John Keola Lake, Robert Uluwehi Cazimero, and Mae Kamāmalu Klein; under Klein’s tutelage he received the title of kumu hula in 2003. Makuakāne is the director and founder of Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, a community-centered hula company and cultural organization, since 1985. He also serves as a spiritual and cultural advisor for the Native Hawaiian Religious Spiritual Group at San Quentin State Prison. His company has performed at such venues as Lincoln Center Out of Doors, New York, NY; the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre and Yerba Buena Fine Arts Center, San Francisco, CA; and other places throughout California, Hawaiʻi, and New Orleans.
Philanthropy.com | By Thalia Beaty, AP | Oct 4, 2023
The 20 fellows will each receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend as they see fit.
Patrick Makuakāne’s choreography and dance have blended hula with contemporary influences while uplifting Hawaiian languages and histories.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 2023 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant,” on Wednesday.
The 20 fellows will each receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want, though they are selected for the exceptional work they’ve already done, their ability to do more, and their ability to leverage and be enabled by the fellowship itself, said Marlies Carruth, who directs the MacArthur Fellows program.
The foundation reviews nominations for fellows over a yearslong process that solicits input from their communities and peers. Fellows do not apply and are never officially informed that they’ve been nominated unless they are selected for the award.
Ian Bassin would rather talk about the 2024 election — “one of the most consequential” in the history of this nation — but right now he must talk a little bit about himself. His grandparents used to tell him, repeatedly: “Just try to make something worthwhile of yourself.”
Standing in his kitchen a few weeks ago, with the MacArthur Foundation on the other end of the phone, Bassin wished he could tell his grandparents the news.
The 47-year-old had won a big prize: a “genius grant” fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, recognizing his work with Protect Democracy, an organization he co-founded in 2016 to help strengthen American democracy and combat authoritarianism.
This year’s class of 20 fellows — whittled down from thousands of nominees, some over a period of years, and publicly announced Wednesday — includes artists, scientists, legal scholars and activists. They fight climate change, examine gene expression and create music. They write novels and study machine learning.
And over the next five years, they will each receive $800,000, in quarterly installments, to use as they see fit.
The 2016 presidential election made clear to Bassin that “we were living through a global democratic recession,” he says. Protect Democracy was his response. The organization’s software VoteShield is designed to fight election fraud. Its National Task Force on Election Crises prepares for unprecedented election catastrophes. Its Law for Truth project files defamation lawsuits to help people harmed by conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
The grants, given every year since 1981, can produce a complicated mix of feelings: honor at the recognition, shock at the money, reflection over the reasons for their work. In California’s East Bay area, Diana Greene Foster snuck away from her college-age children and their friends to return the foundation’s phone call. She is a demographer who studies abortion — specifically the adverse affects of not receiving a desired one, which is more common now in a post-Roe v. Wade era.
“It’s a mix of being happy that I was able to do research that useful and sad that we’re at a point where we’re having this conversation,” says Foster, 52, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco. As states decide whether to pass their own abortion bans, Foster wants the recognition to shine light on her findings — including that those who are denied abortions are more likely to be unemployed and live under the poverty line.
“My hope is they will take the scientific evidence and not just vote on this on the basis of politics,” she says. On a broader level, she hopes it will show “that it’s possible to do good research, even on controversial topics.”
The fellows are 12 women, seven men and one nonbinary individual. They hail from across the country, from Arizona to New York; four live in the Boston area and two each live in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans.
A scientist who studies the airborne transmission of diseases, a master hula dancer and cultural preservationist, and the sitting U.S. poet laureate were among the 20 new recipients of the prestigious fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known as “genius grants,” announced on Wednesday.
MacArthur fellows receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want. Fellows are nominated and endorsed by their peers and communities through an often yearslong process that the foundation oversees. They do not apply and are never officially interviewed for the fellowship before it’s awarded.
A scientist who studies the airborne transmission of diseases, a master hula dancer and cultural preservationist, and the sitting U.S. poet laureate were among the 20 new recipients of the prestigious fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known as “genius grants,” announced on Wednesday.
MacArthur fellows receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want. Fellows are nominated and endorsed by their peers and communities through an often yearslong process that the foundation oversees. They do not apply and are never officially interviewed for the fellowship before it’s awarded.
Each year, the foundation calls the new class of fellows in advance of the public announcement and fellows described being shocked and stunned by the news after receiving a call from an unknown number, which they had sometimes initially ignored.
Ada Limón, who recently began her second term as the country’s poet laureate, said she first missed a call the day after her grandmother, Allamay Barker, had died at the age of 98. It wasn’t until the foundation emailed her that she called back. She said she wept when she heard the news.
StarAdvertiser.com | By Thalia Beaty, AP | Oct 4, 2023
Patrick Makuakane, left, director of a hula school in San Francisco, is shown with producer Lisette Marie Flanary of New York, in July 2003, at the Bishop Museum, before the preview showing of the documentary film “American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawaii.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 2023 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant” today.A scientist who studies the airborne transmission of diseases, a kumu hula and cultural preservationist, and the sitting U.S. poet laureate were among the 20 new recipients of the prestigious fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known as “genius grants,” announced today.
MacArthur fellows receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want. Fellows are nominated and endorsed by their peers and communities through an often yearslong process that the foundation oversees. They do not apply and are never officially interviewed for the fellowship before it’s awarded.
Each year, the foundation calls the new class of fellows in advance of the public announcement and fellows described being shocked and stunned by the news after receiving a call from an unknown number, which they had sometimes initially ignored.
Ada Limón, who recently began her second term as the country’s poet laureate, said she first missed a call the day after her grandmother, Allamay Barker, had died at the age of 98. It wasn’t until the foundation emailed her that she called back. She said she wept when she heard the news.
“I felt like losing the matriarch of my family and then receiving this, it felt like it was a gift from her in some ways,” she said, speaking from her home in Lexington, Kentucky.
Limón will be reading poetry to an audience at the University of Montevallo, a public university in Alabama, and speaking to a creative writing class in the hours after this year’s class of MacArthur fellows are announced.
As poet laureate, she commissioned an anthology of poems ” You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, ” to be published in April and also arranged for historic poems to be installed at seven national parks. NASA is planning to send a poem Limón wrote for an upcoming mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa as part of a time capsule. The poem will be engraved on the spacecraft.
“One of the things that feels most emotional and remarkable to me is that this recognition is coming from within the poetry community,” Limón said.
The foundation has run the fellowship since 1981 and selected more than 1,030 recipients. The awards are given to individuals “of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations,” according to the foundation’s website, and the grants are not tied to a specific project or institution. Many past fellows like Octavia Butler, Paul Farmer and Twyla Tharp are luminaries in their fields and Marlies Carruth, who directs the MacArthur Fellows program, emphasized that they hope fellows will support and inspire each other. The foundation also hosts events for current and past recipients.
“The prize is financial, but it’s also access and being part of a community of extraordinary thinkers and doers,” said Carruth. Last year, the foundation raised the award amount from $625,000 to $800,000. The foundation previously increased the award amount a decade ago from $500,000 to $625,000.
The 2023 class of fellows includes Andrea Armstrong, professor at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law, who created a database of everyone in Louisiana who has died in prison or jail since 2015; Patrick Makuakāne, a kumu hula who is dedicated to preserving Hawaiian cultural heritage; and National Book Award winner Imani Perry, who has authored multiple books about the resistance and activism of Black Americans in the face of injustice.
We welcome audiences to Presidio Theatre for the premiere of RITUAL.
We use ritual to create meaning in our lives, to connect, to grieve, to assuage, to transcend, to hula. In the shade of the Presidio, we embody rituals that transmigrate the soul of an ancestor to an ‘aumakua. We send a legend to heaven. We eat, drink, then get busy and together create a new god.
Let our epiphany transpire.
Audio Inspirations for RITUAL
Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne and his award-winning dance troupe, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, presents MĀHŪ for two performances only this weekend.
Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne and his award-winning dance troupe, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, present an entirely new show, MĀHŪ, for two performances only. Nā Lei Hulu’s newest production features some of the most well-known māhū artists in Hawai’i today, including Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Kuini, and Kaumakaʻiwa Kanakaʻole, beautiful costumes and wonderful choreography..
This huge production has been ready since 2020 and will finally take place this weekend Saturday, March 25th at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 26th at 2:00 p.m. at the Leeward Community College Theatre. Na Lei Hulu is a group known for combining provocative themes with traditional elements of Hula.
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.
“I’m using the kuahu to engage my haumana (students) in this platform we’re stuck with,” he says. “I want to have a higher-level communication with the people in this room with me.”
-Kumu hula Patrick Makuakāne
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.