ON HULA
by Kalua

Hula is a language of the body.  It is a way of telling a story through physical movement as distinct from talking.  Rooted in non-literary society, it replaces books with dance for tracing history and myth.

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One of the earliest books on hula underscored this Unwritten Literature of Hawai'i.  Hawaiian art, dance, music, and poetry were highly integrated into every aspect of life, to a degree far beyond that of industrial society.  “The most telling record of a people's intimate life is the record which it unconsciously makes in its songs,” wrote the author, Nathaniel B. Emerson. 

Hands tell the story, along with movement of the body in rhythmic support of the hands.  Footwork marks the rhythm, while the hands are freer to tell the story.

The all-important hands are, therefore, the most important single aspect of the dance.  Hula can be performed either standing or seated.

Types of hula: Kahiko, ancient, the division of the performers into two sets, the hoopa’a  (chanters) and the olapa  (dancers); Auwana is the term used to define modern.  The ancient and modern are strictly defined.  

The Kahiko was danced to chanting ipus - a hollow gourd beaten upon; and pahu drums - shark skin on hollowed log. 

Auwana includes the use of more modern western instruments: the ukulele, the Hawaiian word meaning “jumping flea,” the name given to the Portuguese instrument, probably first brought to the islands in 1878.  Auwana may also include the guitar, bass, drum set, sometimes piano and other western instruments.  Hula is a living cultural form.
With the coming of the Christian missionaries in the early 19th century, hula was gradually banned - to the point of one being imprisoned if caught performing hula - eventually to be revived in the later part of that century by King Kalakaua.  The differing moral politics ultimately caused compromise between the missionaries and the native Hawaiians that brought about the muumuu, the ankle-length dress, to replace the traditional and more revealing short grass and ti-leaf skirts and kapas. 


Dancers in both ancient and modern use uliuli (feathered gourd),


iliili (clicking rocks or pebbles), kalaau (short sticks), small ipu (gourd), and other implements. 

Hapahaole, that type of commercial hula seen from the earliest Hollywood movies on - “bubble dancing” as it was termed, usually sexually explicit - was the sort of dance masses of the population came to believe was the true hula. 

Parents were hesitant to allow their children to receive training.  Only by getting opportunity to see genuine hula were such parents convinced of the difference.  Though no longer a problem in Hawaii, it still is an issue in many other places.

Hula stood, and continues to stand culturally most important with the Hawaiian people.  Festivals of competitive hula can often last for days on each of the various islands in Hawaii.  The “Merry Monarch,” in honor of King Kalakaua, probably the most prestigious, lasts for 5 days, 6 hours a day, in Hilo on Hawaii, popularly called Big Island.

But, as time is showing, hula, a dance for all ages and abilities, is becoming more a part of the mainstream in many other parts of the world as well.