Moanalua a fitting place for traditional hula fest

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Kamuela Chun, center, kumu hula and chanter, works with students Ku'ulei Ching, left, and Konia Freitas, right, who will assist him in opening the 25th anniversary Prince Lot Hula Festival Saturday at Moanalua Gardens. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Although a Western-style wooden stage was used for the first festival, on July 22, 1978, dancers revel in the feel of performing on the Prince Lot hula mound, said Caroline Brown, who's been on the staff of the nonprofit Moanalua Gardens Foundation since it began sponsoring the festival. This particular mound is composed of a bit of the soil the gardens lost to the Moanalua Freeway in the 1970s, she said.

"When we started out, we started with a wooden platform that we built ourselves," Brown said. "In 1981, they built the mound out of excavated dirt from the freeway.

"The setting is beautiful," she added. "It's noncompetitive, and it's very relaxing, for the general public and for the performers themselves."

For tomorrow's silver anniversary celebration, the foundation called on chanter and kumu hula Kamuela Chun to open the festival in the culturally correct manner, honoring Laka, the deity known as the patron of hula.

"It's going to include an 'awa ceremony to honor the kumu for their work and Moanalua Gardens Foundation for perpetuating this," Chun said. "We're going to be offering traditional chants of inspiration to Laka and for all those who participate."

•	25th annual Prince Lot Hula Festival 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday Moanalua Gardens Free Parking at Tripler Army Medical Center lot, with shuttle to the festival grounds 839-5334, or www.mgf-hawaii.com

The first festival was planned as a celebration of the decision against building the H-3 Freeway through Moanalua Valley, which was a favored site of makahiki and games. So it seems appropriate that the festival includes games and traditional crafts.

This year's event, for example, will feature a reprise of a popular 'ipu workshop in which participants get to finish and keep the gourd that is a central part of hula performances, said Marilyn Schoenke, the foundation's executive director.

The native Hawaiian art exhibit in the gardens' Chinese Hall will return, she added, and this year the festival will introduce a lei-making demonstration by lei master Bill Char.

But hula remains the star attraction of the festival. The design for the commemorative T-shirts includes the implements of hula and the plants considered sacred to the dance.

Among the centerpieces of the annual event will be a performance of the song "Moanalua" by any kumu hula who would like to participate.

Above all, historians describe Moanalua as a fitting place for a celebration of hula, since Prince Lot had hula performed here by Leeward O'ahu halau long before the advent of King Kalakaua, who is better known as the champion of the hula renaissance.