Conference on hula opening today in Hilo
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
HILO, Hawai'i — Hula has become one of Hawai'i's leading exports, and sometimes, in those distant outposts, it's taken on a life of its own.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
That's not always a good thing. Because hula is movement bound up with literature, nature and spirituality, its key practitioners say that it is vital that the dance remain tied to its source more firmly than many of the world's other dance forms. And they say hula is perhaps the primary way in which the Hawaiian culture is spread to non-Hawaiians, both here and around the world.
Kekuhi Kanahele rehearses one of the segments in January's fund-raiser for this week's hula conference.
"I don't think any Hawaiian thing is more recognizable than the hula, more connected to Hawai'i than the hula," said Hokulani Holt-Padilla, a Maui kumu hula and one of the organizers of the week-long World Conference on Hula that convenes today here in Hilo.
"Because of that it has been spread throughout the whole world," she said. "What we want is for people who are hula practitioners, enthusiasts of hula, to come and rediscover the foundations of the dance."
Now the time for a homecoming has arrived. The conference is dubbed "Ka 'Aha Hula 'O Halauaola," translated roughly as "the hula gathering of Halauaola," the latter being a place from a hula legend where life was breathed back into a character from the story.
"That name was chosen because we're breathing life back into hula," said K«hau Kekua, a board member of the Lalakea Foundation. That group and the Edith Kanaka'ole Foundation, are presenters of the conference, expected to draw more than 1,000 to this quiet Big Island town.
The event was the brainchild of Holt-Padilla, Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele and Leina'ala Kalama Heine, three of the best-known kumu hula teaching today. It began, Kanahele said, at a dinner the three shared nearly two years ago after a hula workshop in Honolulu.
It's a first for the hula world, which for centuries has favored passing down knowledge within hula schools or from one teacher to his or her descendants in training. The tradition was that series hula training be performed reverently and privately, reserved for students who had already demonstrated dedication and mastered the basics. There have been smaller workshops conducted here and around the world, but never anything of this magnitude, Kanahele said.
"We all came up with this idea of a conference on hula that's more in-depth than just teaching hula," she said. "It's the one link we have in Hawaiian culture that's very easily been accepted around the world and practiced."
But in a real sense, Kanahele said, the conference (named "Ka 'Aha Hula 'O Halauaola") dates back a bit further, the latest offspring of a movement binding Hawaiian arts, culture and politics. That movement began four years ago with the conflict over Senate Bill 8, a proposal for regulating access to natural resources — primarily lei-making materials and items used for hula accoutrements — that outraged many in the Native Hawaiian community.
Out of that melee arose an association of kumu hula, some of whom had never been politically active before, or recognized their potential power in numbers. They called themselves 'Ilio'ulaokalani, literally "the red dog of the heavens," a reference to a particular cloud formation meant to convey a warning. Many 'Ilio'ulaokalani members helped to design this hula conference. That's why it covers such wide-ranging aspects of the art, everything from studying the most environmentallly sensitive means of collecting hula lei materials to the way hula helps the prison population connect with the spirituality of Hawaiian culture.
Further, the conference provides an opportunity to discuss the future of hula, how it's changing — and how much it can change without departing too far from tradition.
The curriculum began Thursday with pre-conference workshops but gets under way in earnest at noon today, when the participants will meet for an opening ceremony of special chants and dances that many of them learned especially for the occasion. Over the past year, Kanahele said, teachers were dispatched to all islands and to workshops held in several Mainland states to teach hula practitioners the chants and dances required for the ritual.
"It's the whole embodiment of what life is, here and on the other planes," said Ke'alaaumoe Inciong-Ako. "You have to be connected to your ancestors, your 'aumakua (family gods). Everything you do is the ritual to help you get the graces from your akua (gods), the 'aumakua, to do the dance."
Inciong-Ako is the education program supervisor for the Women's Community Correctional Center, where she teaches Hawaiian studies, oli (chant) and dance. Tomorrow she will take part in a seminar, "Hula and Chant as Rehabilitation in the Prison System," a class aimed at shedding light on the healing potential of the cultural practice.
"I think everyone benefits from this," she said. "It's non-Hawaiians as well as Hawaiians ... it brings them in touch with their body, doing something physical, and gives them a chance to get in touch with the values we hold dear.
"The 'ike (insight) ... that intangible way of consciousness you should be at before you share the dance, understanding how Hawaiians are not individualistic, learning to feel intuitively your hula sisters, to move as one," she added. "I tell them, 'Don't think that because your loved one, your kupuna, has passed on, they're not still here around you ... even though you're in here (in prison), you can transcend yourself."
There will be classes on the finer points of choreography, seminars on particular forms of chant, workshops on growing your own lei plants in your home garden. But the conference also will examine larger questions.
Maile Beamer Loo will moderate a panel discussion tomorrow among some of the elders of hula, including George Naope and Loo's own hanai mother, Nona Beamer. Among the topics of discussion: What should be considered "traditional hula"? Do recent chant compositions qualify? Are newer trends, such as Christian adaptations of hula, legitimately part of the dance form? What have they seen in hula performance today that concerns them?
"We're not going the easy route here," Loo said with a laugh.
Kanahele will give the opening presentation, taking the broadest look of all, titled "Hula: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." For example, she said, hula has taken new directions that need discussing, such as the departure from conventional stagings in favor of pageants and productions with a plot line. East-West composite shows, such as Patrick Makuakane's "The Natives Are Restless," and dramatized shows including "Holo Mai Pele" and "Kilohi" by Kanahele's own halau, are examples of these.
There is much more to hula than dance, and Kanahele hopes conference participants will come away clearer on that concept.
"There is a sense of readiness for a lot of people to learn this," she said. "They've only been exposed to the form and not the substance of the dance.
"This is not only a dance form, it comes from a deeper source," she said. "The source is the land, the spirituality of the land."
Loo underscored the rare opportunity afforded by the gathering of so many cultural resources.
"When do you have the experience of learning the styles from someone and not be a member of their halau?" she asked. "I think the idea here is it's a very open and honest discussion about hula for a week, and that doesn't always happen ... let's dance together and let's learn from each other."
