The evolution of the Merrie Monarch into hula's 'Olympics'

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Since June, kumu hula Ed Collier and his students have held a fund-raiser every month, calling it quits only in February when they had collected $22,000, just about enough to finance 19 dancers through the Merrie Monarch Festival.

Ed Collier, kumu hula of Halau O Na Pua Kukui, pounds out the rhythm on an ipu heke for a rehearsal by the seven male dancers entered in the Merrie Monarch Festival hula competition.

But once upon a time, this annual marathon they call the "Olympics of hula," the event that exhausts and exhilarates two dozen dance schools each year, was no big deal.

In fact, it wasn't always about hula competition, which first became part of the Hilo festival 30 years ago. If a time machine could transport fans back to that first edition, they wouldn't even recognize it. It was in a different venue, Hilo's Civic Center; there were no crushing throngs, no armies of security guards and certainly no TV cameras.

Richard Kamanu, now a minister in Kapa'a, Kaua'i, was a Hilo kid in those days, and he was in that first audience.

"We were lucky if you had 300 people there," Kamanu recalled. "It was very laid back ... there were only, like, five halau." (Actually, there were nine, but you get his point.) "And the judges didn't have a judging table, they just sat out in the audience." The time traveler might recognize one element, however: The young dancer who won the first solo competition, Aloha Wong, would look familiar. Since she married and became much better known as kumu hula Aloha Dalire, her three daughters each have won the same "Miss Aloha Hula" title, and her Kane'ohe halau, Keolalaulani Halau 'Olapa O Laka, evolved into a Merrie Monarch fixture.

"It was really mellow," Dalire said. "We pulled numbers for our slots in Aunty Dottie's office that night at the Civic. I drew No. 11."

If Dalire is the Monarch's first hula princess, "Aunty Dottie," a.k.a. Dorothy Thompson, is the first, and still reigning, festival empress. The Merrie Monarch's director is the central authority figure in the planning and execution of an event that has evolved into Hilo's pre-eminent cultural and economic boost, starting every year on Easter Sunday.

The festival actually premiered in 1964, but it was modeled after Maui's Whaling Spree, a touch of 19th-century nostalgia.

Hilo's state Rep. Helene Hale was County Council chairwoman in those days, and her town was struggling through one of its economic doldrums. The county got the ball rolling, but the event was planned under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce.

"The hula was in front of the royal court, but it was just a minor part of the whole festival," Hale said. "The festival was to revive the culture in the late 19th century. We had beard contests, barbershop quartets, and the 'Grogge Shoppe.' People all drank beer. That was very popular, but that was discontinued later." Public sponsorship of drinking events was falling into disfavor, even then, she said.Downtown Hilo businesses were draped in red, white and blue bunting; there was a formal holoku ball at the Naniloa Hotel, and a parade. Very little of all that, besides the parade and the appearances of a royal court, is left.

"They (Chamber of Commerce officials) were going to kill it, for lack of a chairman, and the interest wasn't there," said Thompson, who then was a culture and arts specialist for the county and involved with the festival.

"I called the president of the chamber, Earl Hirotsu. I told him, 'You can't let another Hawaiian festival go down ... they had taken away the Kamehameha Day parade." Thompson paused. "He said, 'Then chair it.'

"I called everybody that was involved with the Merrie Monarch, and nobody would touch it with a 10-foot pole," she said. "It wasn't a hit."

Thompson finally convinced hula master George Naope and Albert Nahalea, formerly of the Hawaiian Homelands Department, each to plan two nights of the weeklong festival, which in 1969 and 1970 still involved mainly pageantry and music, culminating in a recreation of the coronation.

"I told George from the start, 'We gotta make this Hawaiian. This isn't Hawaiian at all.'

"Why don't we do what Kalakaua did, by bringing together dancers from all the islands to the coronation?"

A meeting followed with two kumu hula, Pauline Kekahuna and Louise Kaleiki, who proposed the idea of a hula competition, and after two years of Thompson's direction, the festival held its first contest in 1971, a one-night event.

Thompson, who turns 80 May 16, has sculpted the event the way she sees fit and she has no intention of quitting. She's training daughter Luana Kawelu and colleague George DeMello to replace her at the helm, but not until she gets the final signal.

"When the man above says, 'Dottie this is it,' that's it," she said. "Eh, if Helene Hale at 82 can go back into the Legislature, I'm not there yet." A lot has happened to the competition in three decades. It has been stretched to three nights, and Thompson and all theal participating judges and hula teachers have set some stringent guidelines. The keiki division and the hula implements category were dropped. A kahiko division for the ancient form of hula was added in the second year.

Rules about costuming were set to ensure that the garb fit the time portrayed in the chant or song. One year a solo competitor danced her ancient hula topless — which actually was accurate for the period — her modesty preserved by drapes of maile lei upon lei. But, especially since television coverage had begun in 1981, festival officials decided that could not be allowed.

In the early days, there were few rules. Leina'ala Kalama Heine, kumu hula of Na Pualei O Likolehua, danced with Kekahuna's Hauoli Hula Maidens in those days. But because a trip from Japan had taken her away from competition rehearsals, she sat out the first contest and watched her hula sisters win the top prize.

"I never entered the competition until I took my own halau," she said. "It was a lot less stringent than it was now. Because of the way competition has escalated, there are a lot more rules, but then whatever you wished, you could do."

Heine completed her hula training under "Aunty" Maiki Aiu Lake two years later, opening her own school in 1975. She first entered her students in the Merrie Monarch in 1977.

"Before entering I decided I was just going to go three years," she said. "The best thing for the girls is when you enter into the competition, there's a camaraderie. We're family.

"But it was just too stressful. I think hula has more avenues that we should pursue."

Heine has judged the competition and entered her students one more time but prefers a focus on non-competitive cultural events.

Collier never thought hula should be competitive and declined to enter the first several years. He served as a judge in 1975 and then from 1991-99.

What a difference those 15 years had made. In 1975 there were still no fact sheets detailing each competitor's research and rationale for their performance, to guide the judges. The panel of five simply raised cards numbered one through nine, Olympics-fashion, after the performance. The highest and lowest scores were dropped. Collier, who was young and an easy grader at that stage of life, was frequently dropped.

"Everyone could see right away who was winning and who wasn't," he said. "And, oh, people really booed."

By the time he returned as a judge, each kumu hula was then required to submit a fact sheet, and Collier had cut his own competitive teeth. He started with the high school hula competition he first entered when he became a hula teacher at 'Iolani, and then accepted Naope's invitation to the King Kalakaua Competition in Kona. He said he found that he could judge hula, based on each school's own standards, and that competition can hone a student's skills like nothing else.

Dalire agrees.

"It's made me grow," she said. "Doing the competition has made me do a lot more research. It's made me teach my students to take hula more seriously.

"If anything, I think Aunty Dottie and the whole Merrie Monarch committee deserves a round of applause. Because of the competition, our hula has become more evolving."

But competition can force some tough decisions, especially events that have the cachet that this one does. A few weeks ago, Collier had to trim his roster of 13 women to a dozen. One dancer just wasn't ready.

"In my 41 years of teaching, that was the hardest thing," he said. "But I told her, 'This is not just the high school competition ... this is the Merrie Monarch.' And she understood."