28 Sep In Dance
Stepping into the In-Between
By Constance Hale | InDance Magazine, Sept 2022
In his latest show, MĀHŪ, San Francisco hula master Patrick Makuakāne explores the Hawaiian concept of a fluid gender and an openness to the third self.
When ancient Hawaiian carvers would take material from the natural environment—whether a tree or a bone or a piece of stone—and then begin to shape it into a figure destined for a temple or other sacred place, they had a word for the unfinished work, the in-between entity: māhū. Outside of that ritual process, the word was also used in a different sense, to refer to people whose gender identity was fluid, neither kane (male) nor wahine (female).
But once missionaries arrived in Hawai‘i in 1820 with their Calvin- istic properties, and once American culture overwhelmed Hawai‘i, the noun māhū lost its expansiveness. Today the wehewehe.org dictionary defines it as “homosexual” or “hermaphrodite.” And, unfortunately, it can be used in a downright pejorative sense.
That’s the mahu San Francisco Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne remembers from his teenage years in Hawai‘i, when he started to realize that he was gay. But attitudes are changing in the islands, much as they are nationally, and the groundbreaking choreographer aims to encourage us all to reimagine the term. To do so, he has invited outstanding mahu entertainers from Hawai‘i to collaborate with his company, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu. And he will use his latest show, MĀHŪ, which premieres on October 22, to spotlight the unique Hawaiian concept of a fluid gender.
“Transgender issues are in the zeitgeist, and I was thinking of the many talented mahu people in Hawai‘i,” says Makuakāne, who wrote a grant proposal for the show in 2019 and has had to wait two years to be able to perform it. “I thought, What if I did a show with transgendered artists who sang for us while we danced? I didn’t want to take a political stance, per se. I just wanted to let people hear them sing and watch them dance, because their artistry is so powerful.”
Yet Makuakāne acknowledges that celebrating such artists, and thereby celebrating the respect given to māhū people in ancient Hawaiian society, is inherently political. (There has never been a dance production or any kind of artistic showcase that has ever used that term in its name.) The show intends to move past the shame and ridicule that LGBTQ Hawaiians have endured by being labeled māhū. Instead it invites them to feel pride. Most important to him, though, is to “reclaim the idea of their authenticity and their humanity.”
The concept of a third gender, where individuals can express both their masculinity and femininity freely, is not unique to Hawai‘i. Parallels include hijra in Hindu society, Two-spirit Native Americans, the fakaleiti or fakafefine of Tonga, and the fa’afafine of Samoa.
The show highlights three artists from Hawai‘i who all fall under the hard-to-translate term māhū. Part One begins with Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a hula master and leader in the field of indigenous Hawaiian language and cultural preservation. (She is also the subject of Kumu Hina, a 2014 documentary, and she co-directed Kapaemahu, an animated 2020 film based on the long-hidden history of four stones on Waikiki Beach honoring legendary mahu who brought the healing arts to Hawai‘i.)
Kaumakaiwa’s off-the-charts music, which synthesizes Makuakāne has met with all three of his guest artists separately to conceptualize original pieces that celebrate the tradi- tional status of mahu as cultural stan- dard bearers, artisans, and healers. In Kaumakaiwa, in particular, he found an ambassador of mahu, someone who has thought deeply about the mean- ing of the word not just culturally but artistically. “In Hawai’i, we don’t have gendered pronouns,” she told a hula class in a Zoom lecture. “There is no such thing as ‘she’ or ‘he.’ It’s just ‘o ia.’” The term mahu literally trans- lates to a state of being and doesn’t refer to a specific gender. It encompasses everything, the entire breadth of gender expression.”
With a collaborator like Kaumakaiwa (he calls her his “linchpin”), something new began to happen that took even Makuakāne by surprise. Call it collaboration, alchemy, or just the magic of finding a new muse. “I’m directing her, but I’m stimulated by her, and she by me,” he says.
“I’ve never hid the fact that I am gay, but in this show I can internalize that. I can ask myself, ‘What does it mean for me to do a show called MĀHŪ?’ I can step into a self that is always there, though perhaps hidden a bit, or pro- tected. It allows me to inhabit that self fully.”
He clearly enjoys the flamboyance of these guest artists. “Every song is a parade, and who doesn’t love a parade?” he says. “The combination of guest artists is allowing me to go all out. Every choreographer wants that!”
“For this show, everything is being reexamined,” Makuakāne told Hawaii Public Radio. “People are going to see a combination of different musical styles, of costumes, of traditional, modern and contemporary dancing, chanting.
I mean, I don’t like linear. I don’t like to start with tradi- tion and then move through time to end up in contempo- rary times. I love to mix them all up. Because I feel that’s what my life is. I’m one big wheel collecting everything as I move throughout the day.”