The dance behind the Merrie Monarch festival

• Halau at Merrie Monarch 2003
• Merrie Monarch tickets
• 16 compete for Miss Aloha Hula

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

Malia Ann Kawailanamalie Petersen of O'ahu's Hula Halau O Kamuuela was last year's Miss Aloha Hula winner. Advertiser library photo • April 2002

David Kalama is a KITV producer working on the Merrie Monarch broadcast. Jay Walters, left, is an editor working on the project. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

On TV Merrie Monarch Hula Competition Edith Kanaka'ole Tennis Stadium, Hilo 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday; Miss Aloha Hula, Thursday; group hula kahiko, Friday; group hula 'auana, Saturday. Airing live nightly on KITV-4

Producer David "Kawika" Kalama will start thinking about Merrie Monarch 2004 as soon as Merrie Monarch 2003 wraps up Saturday night. Already playing through his imagination are visions of a show that makes use of the poetry of the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant.

That's how much advance work it takes for KITV to bring the prestigious hula competition to Hawai'i televisions, as well sending it via live streaming video to hula enthusiasts around the world. That and about 46 people here and in Hilo, 9 cameras and two monster TV trucks.

Wray, director of the broadcast, is an 11-year Merrie Monarch veteran. But Kalama's is the invisible hand that has given Merrie Monarch TV coverage its distinctive look and intriguing added features during much of its 22-year history.

Kalama created the segments on the moon-driven Hawaiian planting and fishing calendar, the mini-bios of the Miss Aloha Hula candidates, the pieces on the Kula Kai'apuni Hawaiian-language immersion classes.

"I'm kinda like the hula TV guy," said Kalama, a 26-year veteran of TV production who held Wray's job before he founded his own company to produce Hawai'i-based sports and cultural events. "I know TV. I know hula (he's practically the only member of his 'ohana who doesn't dance). And I know Hawaiian culture. Not many like that."

This year, he visited every one of the 21 halau involved in the competition — even flying to the Mainland, a one-man production crew, to film the lone offshore halau this year, that of Sissy Lilinoe Kaio from Carson City, Calif. Kalama asked each kumu hula to consider the theme "the power and magic of the hula, and the Merrie Monarch Festival": hula's significance, its ability to captivate; and the role the Merrie Monarch plays in contemporary hula.

"I love this event. It's all-encompassing," said Kalama. "It's a festival, it's a celebration of the Hawaiian hula art form, it's a spiritual event. For those of us who think in a Hawaiian way, we're in touch with the flow of the unseen, everything that's been or will be, the space between this and that disappears. I think that happens to the audience at some level."

Kalama produced the first Merrie Monarch telecast in 1981, when KITV took a giant leap by committing to an untried program that would pre-empt three nights of prime-time fare and wasn't expected, at first, to make any money.

His boss at the time suggested that they look into covering the Merrie Monarch, but when he saw Kalama's budget, he blurted, "Are you crazy?"

Then Dick Grimm, KITV general manager at the time, asked Kalama if he thought there was an audience out there and if the station could really pull this off.

"I guarantee it," Kalama said. And the deal — a cooperative one between the festival and the station — was struck.

Today, says KITV vice-president of sales Bill Gaeth, the broadcast is "by far" the No. 1-rated local TV special here, averaging 100,000 viewers a night. In the 2000 Nielsen report, the most recent one to include Merrie Monarch data, the show was rated No. 1 on Friday and Saturday night and close to No. 1 on Thursday. The audience is 60 to 66 percent women, he said, and it skews young.

At 10 o'clock this morning, while most of us are enjoying an Easter brunch or otherwise pursuing our lazy Sunday routines, director Wray will be hunched over a clipboard in the Edith Kanaka'ole Tennis Stadium, punching a stopwatch, scribbling and sketching as Miss Aloha Hula candidate Meali'i Kapiko of Halau Mohala 'lima works through her stage rehearsal for the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival, which begins Thursday night.

On a sheet of paper printed with squares that resemble miniature TV screens, Wray is creating makeshift story boards that take note of the way each dancer and halau uses the stage: the location of the entrance and exit, notable movements in the choreography, costuming or adornments that merit attention.

Wray will spend the better part of his daylight hours this week, starting as early as 6 a.m. and continuing for as long as the stage is free each day and evening, attending every stage rehearsal for the 16 Miss Aloha Hula candidates and 21 halau participating in Merrie Monarch 2003.

Come Thursday night, all this will be translated into directions murmured into the headphones of the floor directors and camera operators stationed around the Merrie Monarch stage, capturing the action on nine cameras.

"I'm the only one of the technical crew that will have seen all of the dances," said Wray.

Only once in the 11 years that he's been directing the Merrie Monarch has he failed to exercise this "discipline," as he calls it. "I didn't do it the first year and I found myself surprised in a bad way a little too often, not knowing what was coming. It only took me one," he said.

Wray had considerable experience directing live and remote music shows in Hawai'i, but knew little of hula when he started. Over the years, he has been somewhat humbled by the experience, he said, and has learned to think not just from a TV perspective, but from a hula perspective. That is, the best TV might be a close-up of one dancer's animated face, but proper understanding of the dance demands that the dancers be shown head to toe.

"You can have quick cuts to body parts, but with hula, what's important is the total body experience," he said.

Ironically, the two men most directly responsible for seeing that Hawai'i and the world experience the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival never get to see it in person themselves. They spend all three nights of the competition in a production studio housed in oversized RVs parked outside Edith Kanaka'ole Tennis Stadium.

But the work begins long before.

The TV broadcast is under the direction of a triumvirate of Wray, Kalama and Merrie Monarch director Dorothy "Auntie Dottie" Thompson, who agree on such basic ground rules as that the cameras are never to impede dancers in any way, the primary focus should be on dancers (not the audience or musicians) and that dancers' mistakes are not to be emphasized. All agree the dignity of kahiko (traditional-style dance) is to be respected and controversy kept to a minimum.

A trio of talent — hostess Paula Akana, emcee and announcer Kimo Kahoano and commentator Manu Boyd — take their direction from Wray.

Technically, Kalama's company is retained to work on Merrie Monarch between January and April.

Practically, Kalama is thinking Merrie Monarch year-round. He knew when the first Hawaiian language immersion class were freshmen that he would feature them in the broadcast when they were seniors. This was a memorable piece of television during which the cameras followed the students as they worked in a taro lo'i and learned various Hawaiian cultural practices, speaking in Hawaiian as they routinely do, with much of it untranslated — a rare instance that delighted speakers of the language.

Kalama's task is to create the framework for the broadcast. He produces about 40 segments broadcast over three nights to fit in around the competition coverage, news breaks and 70 or so commercials. These include short stories, helpful information (such as explanations of instruments, adornments or dance steps) and introductions of contestants or kumu hula. He and his crew spend months shooting film and working in a shadowy editing bay off the KITV newsroom, knitting these together.

He's getting a bit less time than he used to these days; the intermission is now taken up with news reports rather than a Kalama-produced feature.

But he retains a sense of mission. Son of a Hawaiian father and an English/Scottish/Irish mother, he was born in Guam and has lived all over O'ahu. He graduated from Kamehameha and spent four years in the Air Force before returning to the University of Hawai'i and a job in television production. He has made films about Kaho'olawe and the Onipa'a overthrow anniversary event. His next project is a series on the legends of Maui throughout Polynesia.

With his Merrie Monarch coverage and other projects, Kalama said, he is attempting nothing less than the creation of "Hawaiian television."

Such television, like the hula itself, ideally has the power to communicate to those who know little about the Hawaiian culture, but offer a deeper layer of meaning for those with a deeper knowledge and understanding.

For him, the heart of hula is the chant, "Hawaiian poetry" he calls it. His life's mission, he says, is to "adapt the aesthetics of Hawaiian poetry to the medium of television."

But he is quick to place his work in perspective: "TV is a collaborative medium. It doesn't work unless everybody is doing the best they can do in their individual jobs." And, at Merrie Monarch, "whatever we do is secondary to what is happening on the main stage."

Halau at Merrie Monarch 2003

Halau participating in this year's Merrie Monarch festival, with areas of competition, kumu hula and place of origin:

1. Halau Hula O Hokulani: competing in Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Hokulani De Rego, Mililani.
2. Halau Hula O Kahikilaulani: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine, Kane; Ray Fonseca, Hilo, Big Island.
3. Halau Hula 'O Kawaili'ula: Wahine, Kane; Chinky Mahoe, Kailua.
4. Halau Hula Olana: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Olana and Howard Ai, Pearl City.
5. Halau I Ka Wekiu: Miss Aloha Hula, Kane, Wahine; Karl Veto Baker and Michael Casupang, Honolulu.
6. Halau Ka Ua Kani Lehua: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine, Kane; Johnny Lum Ho, Hilo, Big Island.
7. Halau Kealakapawa: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Michael Ka'ilipunohu Canopin, Honolulu.
8. Halau Ke Kia'I A 'O Hula: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Kapi'olani Ha'o, Honolulu.
9. Halau Mohala 'Ilima: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Mapuana de Silva, Ka'ohao, Kailua.
10. Halau Na Mamo 'O Pu'uanahulu: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine, Kane; William Haunu'u Sonny Ching, Honolulu.
11. Halau 'O Ke anuenue: Wahine; Glenn Kelena Vasconcellos, Hilo, Big Island.
12. Halau O Na Pua Kukui: Kane, Wahine; Ed Collier, Kalihi.
13. Hula Halau 'O Kamuela: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Kau'i Kamana'o and Kunewa Mook, Kalihi/Waimanalo.
14. Ka Pa Hula O Kamehameha: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine, Kane; Snowbird Bento/Ho'olua Stender/Kaleo Trinidad, Kapalama Uka.
15. Ka Pa Hula O Kauanoe O Wa'ahila: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Maelia Loebenstein-Carter, Kaimuki.
16. Keolalaulani Halau 'Ulapa O Laka: Miss Aloha Hula, Kane, Wahine; Aloha Dalire, He'eia, Kane'ohe.
17. Kanoe'eau Dance Academy: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Ke'ala Kukona, Wai'ehu, Maui.
18. Na Hula 'O Kaohikukapulani: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Kapu Kinimaka-Alquiza, Hanapepe, Kau-a'i.
19. Na Pua Me Ke Aloha/Hula Halau O Lilinoe: Kane; Sissy Lilinoe Ka'io, Carson, Calif.
20. Puka'ikapuaokalani Hula Halau: Wahine; Ellen Castillo, Kailua.
21. Pukalani Hula Hale: Miss Aloha Hula, Wahine; Nina Maxwell/Hi'ilei Maxwell-Juan, Pukalani, Maui.

Merrie Monarch tickets

• Merrie Monarch Hula Competition tickets routinely are sold out months in advance. To enter the ticket lottery for next year, write Merrie Monarch Hula Festival, Hawaii Naniloa Resort, 93 Banyan Drive, Hilo, HI 96720. Send a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
• Phone (808) 935-9168. (Note: It can be difficult to get through; the small staff is very busy.)

16 compete for Miss Aloha Hula

Candidates for Miss Aloha Hula 2003, in alphabetical order:

1. Shelsea Lilia Makanoe Lindsey Ai, Halau Hula Olana.
2. Lauren Teani Kahiwahiwa Buchner, Keolalaulani Halau 'Ulapa O Laka.
3. Hi'ileiokalani Costa, Ka Pa Hula O Kamehameha.
4. Kara Leionani Chow, Na Hula 'O Kaohikukapulani.
5. Ka'enaalohaokau'ikaukehakeha Aoe Hopkins, Halau I Ka Wekiu.
6. Chrissy Noelani Kama, Halau Ka Ua Kani Lehua.
7. Meali'i Kapiko, Halau Mohala 'Ilima.
8. Melanie Lehua Kim, Hula Halau 'O Kamuela.
9. Cialyn Thara Kawahineikuliakau'i Broclic Kukona-Pacheco, Kano'eau Dance Academy.
10. Wendee Hualani Lim, Halau Kealakapawa.
11. Sheena Makalihaliha Lino, Halau Ke Kia'i A 'O Hula.
12. Laura Leiali'iokalanihekilimakanilunaonapali Mano'i, Ka Pa Hula O Kauanoe O Wa'ahila.
13. Anne Matsumoto, Pukalani Hula Hale.
14. Jennifer Kehaulani Oyama, Halau Na Mamo 'O Pu'uanahulu.
15. Brooke Kealahou Takara, Halau Hula O Hokulani.
16. Gabrielle Kamalamalamaonalani Yamashita, Halau Hula O Kahikilaulani.