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.
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.
Roxie Theater, SF | October 24, 2022. Q&A with Directors Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson and Editor Bill Weber following the screening!
On Honolulu’s famed Waikiki Beach stand four giant boulders placed as a tribute to the four legendary mahu–individuals of dual male and female spirit-who brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii long ago. Although the stones have survived for centuries, their story has been hidden and the respected role of mahu erased. The Healer Stones of Kapaemahu documents the trail of post-colonial suppression through the eyes of a Native Hawaiian director, herself mahu, and uses rare archival materials, new historical findings, and vivid animation to bring the unexpurgated story back to life.
Directed by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, 2022. 56minutes.
Say Aloha to These Local Luminaries in Dance, Education, Sports and More
by Jeanne Cooper
Patrick Makuakāne | Sixteen years after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, the iconoclastic kumu (hula master) picked up a second such honor, this time from the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce of Northern California at its 20th anniversary gala in May. “That just means I’m old,” jokes Makuakāne, who founded dance company Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu in 1985, a year after moving to San Francisco from his hometown of Honolulu. Still abuzz from presenting hula at his sixth Burning Man, Makuakāne says he’s also invigorated by the collaborators for his troupe’s annual Palace of Fine Arts performances, October 22 and 23. Called Mahu, the Hawaiian term for “third gender” or transgender, the show features mahu trio Kuini, kumu Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu and singer-songwriter Kaumakaiwa Kanaka‘ole, “who are over the top because that’s who they are,” Makuakāne notes. “As a teacher, you pray to get those kinds of musicians to inspire your students to dance their ass off. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
May 27, 2022 | Hawaiʻi Chamber of Commerce of Northern California
Kumu Patrick Makuakāne receives the 2022 Kūlia I Ka Nuʻu Lifetime Achievement Award.
Patrick Makuakāne is the Director & Kumu Hula of Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu. He is a creative force in the hula world, and is well known for his innovative choreography. His work is grounded in the traditions and fundamentals of hula, and he labors to keep traditional dances intact as they have been for generations. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, Mr. Makuakāne began dancing at the age of 13 and went on to study with some of Hawai’i’s most recognized hula masters, including John Keola Lake and Robert Cazimero.
The Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) prison population in the U.S. skyrocketed 250 percent in the 1990s, while the country’s overall prison population grew by only 77 percent. AAPI is now counted within a group called “Others” by the prison tracking system. Among “Others” released from state prisons across this country in 2005, the recidivism rate for the AAPI community is sobering. Seventy-two percent were arrested for another crime within three years. For the AAPIs that return to San Quentin’ there is hope through spiritual services called the Native Hawaiian Religious Group (NHRG).
In San Quentin, one of the few remaining native Hawaiians is perched in his cell, meditating and reading about returning to the place he now understands is his home — Hawaii. Travis Vales, 28 years old, has his sights set on returning to the Islands, “to go home,” after his prison term is complete. “Being at San Quentin has allowed me to touch my familial roots like I would never have done on the streets. Now, I want to utilize my knowledge and skills to provide affordable housing, and to teach basic work skills and money management. If I can assist in fighting the epidemic of homelessness and drug usage at home, I believe Hawaii can be more than a tourist attraction. To me, it all starts with a willingness to encourage people to be and do more by leading.”
The San Quentin Native Hawaiians and members of the AAPI community together make up the NHRG. The group assists in the rehabilitation of the incarcerated men. The group’s mission is helping participants connect with their roots and culture through traditional dance and chants, while encouraging a spiritual journey. Some of the men were disconnected from their culture before incarceration. As a result, they gravitated towards gangs, drugs and violence. Through the NHRG these men are able to hold them for their actions. Unfortunately, the NHRG has been on a year and a half absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The men of Native Hawaiian Religious Group practiced traditional dances to keep traditions alive. For more about NHRG log on to www.naleihulu.org.
When the NHRG resumes, Vales will have an opportunity to study his culture, which he believes will make him “one with the earth and all of its peaceful aspects.” He continued, “I pray I can be touched by the spiritual teachings of Kumu Patrick Makuakāne, the way my incarcerated brothers here before me were touched. I can look forward to seeing my family come in to watch me perform in this holy ritual.”
Kumu Patrick Makuakāne, a spiritual leader, is the cultural anchor of San Quentin’s NHRG and is assisted by Adel “Auntie Adel” Serafino and Jun “Auntie Jun” Hamamato. Their goal is to build a bridge between the outside local AAPI community and the incarcerated AAPI community. Adel teaches ukulele. Hamamoto teaches origami classes.
History of the AAPI struggles
The economic boom of American and Japanese commercialism, both before and after WWII, diminished the footprint of native Hawaiian tribes. Today they are a shadow of what they were. Since 1918, when Queen Lili‘uokalani exchanged Hawaiian sovereignty for a paltry sum of money, Hawaiians have seen their homeland gentrified and their native identity fade.
As was the experience of natives on the mainland whose land was incorporated into the United States, Hawaiian native culture became blended with the mainland’s White, European-rooted culture. This relationship led to an erosion of native cultural values.
As investments from the mainland accelerated following WWII, including a building boom in the ’70s and ’80s, the “progress” that it represented was never fully shared by the native people whose culture contributed so much to the appeal of the islands. Don Ho’s Tiny Bubbles thrived, as the island culture became merely a tool to promote tourism. Pacific Islanders believe that they have witnessed the destruction of their communities and now are contemplating reparations.
Patrick Makuakāne is the founder and artistic director of the Hawaiian dance company, Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu (“the many feathered wreaths at the summit, held in high esteem”). He recently joined with Saddle Road Productions to form the group Eō. In April, they released their first single, Hānau, about the birth of the Hawaiian Islands, from the album of the same name, which comes out later this year.
Makuakāne, who has received several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards as well as a lifetime achievement award from the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, is known for combining disparate elements in hula — he has included opera, drag queens, and electronic music in his shows — as well as one telling the story of the colonization of Hawaii. His annual shows sell out the Palace of Fine Arts, and he’s performed on the streets of New York City and San Francisco, Burning Man, and San Quentin Prison.
In a video interview, Makuakāne talked about how he joined up with Patrick and Scarlet Eskildse from Saddle Road Productions (when they did some traditional Hawaii music in the style of lindy hop), making his first album, marrying disparate things to create dialogue, some dances being like precious family heirlooms that should be left alone, and the best compliment he ever got about his work.
Hula dancing might not seem like the most obvious pastime for grizzled male prisoners, but it is apparently shaping up to be an unlikely method of reform for California inmates.
The infamous San Quinten State Prison of northern California has been hosting hula classes for the male inmates twice a week – and many of them say that it has become an invaluable source of emotional relief and inspiration.
“Pre-hula, I was a really dark person,” one inmate told Circa. “But hula really spring-boarded it for me. I think, had I not found myself spiritually, I still would be searching.”
Though there are not many studies that have precisely quantified the benefits of hula dancing, experts say that the traditional art form has a tremendous impact on the physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing of both Native Hawaiians and non-Natives. This study even says that it helps non-Hawaiian dancers to become more culturally aware and appreciative of other lifestyles.
Similarly, this West Virginia nonprofit has found transformational success in teaching yoga classes at local prisons and correctional facilities.
“The need for healing within the prison environment is profound,” the nonprofit’s co-founder told Good News Network. “They’re using these tools to get in touch with what they care about. What kind of person do they want to be while they’re in prison—and how to find that freedom on the inside while they’re incarcerated. It’s really very powerful.”
Over three decades, hula choreographer, dancer and teacher Patrick Makuakāne has brought his dance company everywhere from Burning Man to airplane aisles to San Quentin State Prison, where he leads dance gatherings for inmates.
Opening Saturday, Oct. 20, Nā Lei Hulu’s new show, “I Mua: Hula in Unusual Places,” celebrates and advances his company’s artistic journey.
Innovating while respecting tradition is a tricky balance, but Kumu Hula (hula master) Makuakāne, who is also a co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance festival, achieves it. Driven by a deep love of the art form he grew up with on Oahu, he brings to it a curious spirit and a master’s sense of storytelling — not to mention a cadre of marvelous dancers.
“I Mua” combines pieces inspired by Black Rock Desert and San Quentin, a work accompanied by soprano May Kehrani singing “The Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’ opera “Lakmé,” and pieces set to electronica, pop and Bette Midler.
The Palace of Fine Arts, however, turns out to be a not-unusual place for hula, which got center stage there during the 1915 World’s Fair. “I Mua” shows how far hula has journeyed in the century since.
Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu: 8 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 20 and 27; 3 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 21 and 28. $15-$200. Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon St., S.F. 415-392-4400. naleihulu.org
