Sorry Los Angeles Times, but, according to Hawaiian cultural standards, newspaper organizations are only successful once a song has been written about them.
Dancers from the San Francisco-based Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu hula school performed at The Carpenter Performing Arts Center at California State University, Long Beach on Saturday. Performers wearing kukui nuts on their wrists and necks interpreted ancient Hawaiian stories through dance, blending traditional Hawaiian styling with contemporary genres.
The women donned floral-patterned “pa’u” knee-length skirts and the men adorned a light-yellow “malo” loincloth.
“Learning hula is synonymous with learning about the culture. They are not two distinct things,” Patrick Makuakane, the director and founder of Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu dance school, said. “Learning hula is not only learning the dance, it’s learning the Hawaiian culture, society and how they live, the way they fell in love, their religion and their government.”
Makuakane incorporated the tumultuous evolution of Hawaiian newspapers from 1834 to 1948 into Saturday’s show.
“The newspapers loved having songs written about themselves,” Makuakane said. “They go on-and-on about how fabulous they are, how they honor truth and integrity and they usually talk smack about other newspapers; it makes for an interesting read.”
Makuakane added that there are no Hawaiian language newspapers today, but the huge amount of information that the newspapers published is being translated and made accessible online.
Another popular historic-staple that made it into the show was the legend of the volcano god, Pele.
Hawaiian native Jason Laskey, a choreographer of the show, explained that Pele’s sister, Hi’iaka, retrieved the chief that Pele fell in love with, but he was dead. Even though the separation from his lover killed him, Hi’iaka was able to revive the chief and reunite him with Pele.
Laughter broke out from the crowd in a later scene called “Birth Certificate Hula,” a dance inspired by the controversy of whether or not President Barack Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate was legitimate.
Makuakane jokingly said that he tried to get Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu to perform during Obama’s inauguration, but the White House had already booked Beyoncé.
“The roots of hula are widely debated. Some people think its religious based, some believe its based on warriors dancing,” Laskey said, giving his take on hula’s history. “Just like any type of culture or art form, it stayed true to tradition but it has evolved over time and introduced new elements to the dance.”
While the school honors Hawaiian classics, it fuses hula with modern-day genres such as jazz and pop-music chart-toppers like Cameo’s “Word Up” and Rihanna’s single “Only Girl in the World.”
“That was the directors way of interpreting “hula mua,” or hula that moves forward,” Hawaiian-native Desiree Woodward-Lee, one of the show’s performers, said. She explained that the term encompasses an approach of taking familiar music that people in the U.S. are comfortable with and putting a nice hula to it.
“We are continuing to push forward the culture,” Woodward-Lee said. “[We are] holding onto the foundation of Hawaiian dance [while] stepping outside the box with a little bit of modern dance.”