Posted on: Thursday, March 31, 2005

MERRIE MONARCH 2005 ONLINE DIARY • DAY TWO
Memorable moments

By Wanda Adams
Assistant Features Editor

Thursday, March 31.

HILO, Hawai'i, — It is always the unscripted moments that stay with you after a performance.

The moment that stands out came during a rehearsal of Wednesday night's Ho'ike, the free hula performance that is the Merrie Monarch Festival's way of thanking Hilo's people for their hospitality in hosting this annual celebration of Hawaiian culture and the hula.

Members of a Japanese halau reverently helped to the stage a frail little man who could barely shuffle the few steps to the microphone: Uncle George Naope, hula master of the Merrie Monarch hula competition.

With his arthritic fingers flashing supersized rings, the man who invented Island-style bling-bling shooed his attendants away with an energetically wielded 'ukulele. Then he held the crowd in the palm of his hand while he performed a couple of numbers, including a moving and surprisingly powerful rendition of the romantic standard "Waikiki."

Naope is usually seen around Merrie Monarch sitting regally in the lobby of the Naniloa Hotel, surrounded by crowds of adoring Japanese hula fans, who clamor to have their picture taken with him. He makes an appearance finals night in his trademark gold lame pants and lauhala papale loaded down with flowers, inching up the ramp to join other kumu hula during the dancing free-for-all that serves to eat up time until the ballots can be counted.

Naope had been called to the stage by his former student, Tony Tauvela, who has been teaching hula in Japan for some years. He brought his Halau Hula Mele 'Ohana to Ho'ike night — a large contingent of graceful women and, unusually, a small and energetic troupe of hula kane who attacked the stage like a cross between Chinky Mahoe's boys and the Three Stooges, mugging for the crowd and playing up the sexy moments in their dances.

Unfortunately for them, perhaps, they followed Halau O Kekuhi, who delivered a first act about the exploits of Pele that vibrated with sexual tension and exploded in places like a night-time eruption at Kilauea. At one point, dancer Kaipo Frias was lying backward on his heels, knees splayed with only his toes touching the floor, his entire body trembling as he gave himself to the goddess.

After that, the Japanese dancers' technical precision, perfect makeup and flowing silk tea gowns seemed pallid, and some of their moves more like water ballet than hula.

But then there came a moment when the Nihon dancers gathered in a circle, holding hands, and began to sing in Hawaiian. You could read the sincerity and the emotion in the faces of these people who had traveled so far out of love of an art they could only touch from a distance. Their kumu described how difficult it was for them to learn hula without having seen the lehua in bloom or been touched by Hilo's rains, and how they had spent the previous days visiting sites around the Big Island to prepare. As the dancers performed a final number, the audience opened their hearts and shouted their approval.

As I said, unscripted and extremely touching.

The show's third segment consisted of a series of dances choroegraphed by Hilo's Johnny Lum Ho, each more complex and high-energy than the last, and involving a melding of Tahitian moves and hula mele. About the time the dancers came out in silver-dyed raffia with peacock-blue feathers fluffing from their waists, I was suffering from sensory overload. It was, as predicted, an immense crowd pleaser and capped the evening off just as promised.

A note: As I write this Thursday morning while watching a rehearsal of Halau Hula Olana, I learned that it is not only Manu Boyd's Miss Aloha Hula candidate that will be using Queen Lili'uokalani's "Alohe 'Oe" (see last Sunday's story). The opening lines also serve as a ka'i — the fragment of music sampled during the entry of a halau — for Olana's group 'auana.

Tomorrow: One halau's unusual approach to song choice.