Hula
By Angeline Shaka
Hula is Hawaiʻi’s indigenous dance form; it is
also a way of life. Underneath the surface of
hula’s gestures lies a cultural system that
nurtures and sustains Native Hawaiian people,
reminding them of their collective history and
their identity as Hawaiʻi’s indigenous
inhabitants. Unlike other dance practices in
which movement can exist separately from
music, traditional hula depends on the
harmonious interdependence of poetic lyric
with embellishing gesture: its dances affirm
Godly and ancestral connections while also
establishing the social, natural, philosophical,
and spiritual relationship of Native Hawaiians to
their ʻāina (land). Hula dancers bring to life
stories of Hawaiʻi’s gods and aliʻi (chiefs),
celebrated as fearsome warriors, passionate
lovers, and revered leaders. Hula’s popularity
travels far beyond its native shores; Hawaiians
and non-Hawaiians alike—across the
continental U.S., in Mexico, throughout Europe,
as well as in Asia—dance hula in hālau (formal
hula schools) or recreationally at gym and
community center fitness classes.
century, ʻauana hula, which dates from the
reign of King David Kālakaua (r. 1874-1891),
emphasizes hula’s entertainment qualities. In
their individual ways, however, both hula styles
trace ancient Hawaiian genealogies, to honor
nature’s procreative and destructive cycles.
Today hula is typically characterized as either
kahiko (ancient hula) or ‘auana (modern hula),
two terms that effectively function as umbrellas
under which numerous song and dance styles
are placed.1 Kahiko hulas are performed to
percussive accompaniment, the ipuheke
(double gourd) or the pahu drum (shark skin
drum). ‘Auana mele hula (hula songs) are
composed following Western melodic
structures. These so-called modern hulas are
accompanied by stringed instruments such as
the ukulele and various guitars: bass, slack key,
or lap steel guitar.2 While kahiko is more closely
associated with hula’s spiritual traditions dating
from before Western contact in the eighteenth
Origin Stories
Several of the Hawaiian Islands proudly claim to
be hula’s birthplace, recounting hula’s
beginnings via myths peopled by dancing gods
and humans. According to one myth cycle from
Hawaiʻi Island, the goddess Hiʻiaka is the first
hula dancer. Having been taught the form by
her human friend Hopoe, the first kumu hula
(hula teacher), Hiʻiaka dances to appease her
sister, volcano goddess Pele. In another legend,
the goddess Kapoʻulakinaku (Kapo) is said to
have established hula’s protocol, a series of
rules for teaching, learning, and dancing hula.
Still a third origin story links hula’s beginning
with Laʻamaikahiki (Laka), on Moloka’i. All of
these stories and their protagonists have been
incorporated into hula practice. Hula dancers
1
In her monograph Sacred Hula: The Hula ʻĀlaʻapapa in Historical
Perspective (1998), Amy Stillman describes the hula ʻālaʻapapa, a
sacred hula form performed to the ipuheke. Hula ‘ōlapa describes
another ancient hula form also accompanied by the ipuheke,
dating from the late 19th century.
2
These ʻauana hula forms include the Kalākaua era’s hula kuʻi and
the “hapa haole hulas” from 1910s and 1930s-1960s. Hapa haole
hulas and music are songs with themes taken from Hawaiian
culture that are performed in English or in a combination of both
languages.
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
Skilled hula dancers perform in unison, using
their torsos, heads, arms, and hands to
translate the poetic lyric, the kaona of mele
hula, into imagery. Composers use kaona to
embed powerful blessings into their songs and
their chants (Pukui 1983, 129).3 The hula
dancers’ footwork, meanwhile, stays closely
connected to the ground, following the
hoʻopaʻa’s rhythmic and vocal accompaniment.
It is through the combination of these various
aspects—an expressive upper body whose
gestures highlight certain meanings of a song’s
lyric with a rhythmical complement in the lower
body’s footwork and hip movements—that hula
dancers animate hula’s multiple expressive
layers of meaning and create hula’s
“heartbeat.”4
3
According to Hawaiian custom language contains power. It is a
power that can be unleashed through one’s sounding of a word. If
properly sounded or used, words initiate healing but if spoken or
combined improperly, the same words could be injurious.
4
King David Kalākaua (1836-1891) famously said hula was the
“language and heartbeat of the people.” He meant that hula is the
expression of the Hawaiian soul, and of life itself.
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honor each of the personas linked to hula: Kapo
and Laka are the divine patrons of hula, while
many mele hula are dedicated to the tales of
Hiʻiaka and her fiery sister, Pele.
Performance and Training Contexts
Before Captain James Cook’s self-proclaimed
discovery of the Hawaiian Island chain in 1778,
hula had at least two different uses in society:
to intensify certain religious rites taking place in
heiau (special places of worship), and to amuse
the Hawaiian people—often while recognizing
the distinction of aliʻi, who were considered to
be descended from gods themselves. In both
religious and entertainment contexts hula
reflected Hawaiians’ complex hierarchical
society organized by a set of sacred laws called
kapu, which were intended to protect and
cultivate mana (divinely ordained power). In
addition to establishing the time’s social
conventions, kapu emulated a parallel
arrangement of the universe’s godly
hierarchies. Kapu designated every action and
relationship within society (earthly and
heavenly): what and with whom one could eat;
where and when one could plant or fish or
harvest; how one would worship; who was aliʻi.
Everything—animate and inanimate—was (and
still is) imbued with mana; those with close links
to the gods, like the aliʻi, possessed more mana
than others. At the same time, however, mana
could be lost if proper care was not taken. The
rules of kapu were set into place to protect
those with greater mana—hence the sexes ate
separately and people of differing classes,
especially the lower classes, were required to
take special precautions, often on pain of death,
not to defile someone of higher rank.
Hula dancers were similarly ruled by the laws of
kapu. Upon entering hālau to learn hula,
dancers committed themselves to Kapo and
Laka. Earliest training practices consisted of
learning through ritual ceremony at a kuahu
(altar) dedicated to all of hula’s gods under the
expert guidance of a kumu hula. Hula novitiates
left their families to study and live, devoting
themselves fully to their lessons. The training
culminated with the ‘uniki, a graduation ritual
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
during which the student would, for the first
time, dance in public. After ‘uniki the pupil, who
would always remain a devotee of Laka/Kapo,
was permitted to perform widely. Often these
hula poʻe (hula people) would join troupes who
were “on call” to provide entertainment and to
foster an increase of mana for a particular chief.
Profound Cultural Change
Among the many monarchs to rule in Hawaiʻi,
King Kamehameha (ca. 1758-1819) stands out
as perhaps the most powerful. Nicknamed
“Kamehameha the Great,” he conquered the
ruling families of each of the islands to establish
the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1810—thirty years
after Western contact commenced. The
presence of these seafarers—whalers and
traders— initiated an era marked by profound
change to Hawaiian culture in the form of new
material goods, new social practices and
customs, new opportunities for trade and
travel, and of course, new and deadly diseases
that killed anywhere from 265,000 -865,000
people from 1778-1823.5 With Kamehameha’s
death in 1819 the young Liholiho (Kamehameha
II) abolished kapu under pressure from Regent
Queen Kaʻahumanu, plunging Hawaiians into
deeper chaos. Liholiho’s actions also
inadvertently facilitated his people’s conversion
to Christianity when, in 1820, a company of
Protestant missionaries arrived.
Armed with a new value system and with
writing (a fascinating and powerful technology
that was new for Hawaiʻi’s orally-based
society)6, the missionaries’ timing couldn’t have
been better for instituting their “civilizing”
goals: instilling a Protestant work ethic and
cultivating puritan morals in Native Hawaiians—
morals which led the newcomers to express
dismay and revulsion at the supposedly
licentious and savage hula dancing. The
missionaries’ arrival marked the beginning of
5
Silva, Noenoe K. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to
American Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004:
24.
6
Within six months of their arrival missionaries created the
Hawaiian orthography. The Hawaiian alphabet consists of 13
letters: a e i o u h k l m n p w and a backward apostrophe (‘) called
an ‘okina.
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their repeated attempts to persuade Hawaiian
authorities to prohibit public hula
performance,7 and then later to use their
significant influence in shaping Kingdom
governmental policy with further attempts to
ban hula. Unable to fully abolish hula’s practice,
their efforts succeeded only in pushing hula
performance underground or to remote areas,
far from rapidly growing urban centers.
In 1893 a group of American businessmen
staged a coup, forcing Queen Liliʻuokalani
(1838-1917) to abdicate her leadership of the
Hawaiian kingdom. By 1898 President William
McKinley annexed the newly formed Republic
of Hawaiʻi to the U.S., and by the early 1900s
these businessmen, the children of
missionaries, began to popularize a new vision
of hula and the hula dancer—the exotically
sensuous “hula girl.”
Tourist Hula
The “hula girl” is the most visible persona
associated with hula and with Hawaiʻi. Cocreated during the first half of the 20th century
by a nascent tourist industry and Hollywood’s
cinema, the hula dancer image was adapted by
both industries for their own purposes. “Hula
girls” on pictures and postcards from 1913 have
been described as “[running] the gamut from
beautiful and alluring to sexual, to
pornographic” (Desmond 1999, 48). Her lithe
figure and brown skin was crafted to be both
enchanting and refreshing to foreigners who
basked in her warm aloha (welcome) while they
lounged on her sun-kissed beaches. Until the
latter part of the 20th century hula was
overwhelmingly defined as a feminine activity;
males who danced were considered effeminate
and commonly stereotyped as homosexual.
Meanwhile touristic demands and hapa haole
performances threatened to eclipse ancient
hulas that were not as prevalent in more
commercial venues.
Contemporary Cultural Contexts
Despite hula’s troubled colonial history with
7
In 1830 Queen Kaʻahumanu attempted just this by banning
public hula performances on the grounds that hula was immoral.
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
Christianity and the West, hula remains a
vibrant celebration of Kanaka Maoli (Native
Hawaiian) history and identity—and today is
performed by both sexes. It continues to evolve,
accommodating new influences and
reproducing traditional practices. In addition to
the many tourist venues where people can
encounter hula, other avenues for experiencing
traditional hula include hula competitions,
Hawaiian/Polynesian cultural festivals, and
concert hula performances. Much of this vitality
can be linked with the civil rights era’s
“Hawaiian cultural renaissance” in the 1970s,
when practitioners who were trained under
revered kumu hulas like Maiki Aiu Lake (19251984)8, Iolani Luahine (1915-1978), Edith
Kanakaʻole (1913-1979), George Kanahele
(1930-2000), and Kauʻi Zuttermeister (19081994) began advocating to revitalize traditional
Hawaiian customs (in particular hula and
ancient navigational practices) that were in
danger of being lost in the face of continued
colonial policies that devalued Hawaiian
practices while prioritizing U.S. interests.9 The
Hawaiian cultural renaissance marked a turning
point, initiating multiple cultural and political
efforts aimed at reclaiming Native Hawaiian
sovereignty and self-determination.
Competition and Concert Hula
One of the key cultural efforts to come out of
the Hawaiian renaissance was the Merrie
Monarch festival, named for Hawaiʻi’s
penultimate monarch and champion of hula,
King David Kālakaua.10 Known today as the
“Olympics of hula,” the annual week-long
cultural festival and hula competition located in
Hilo, Hawaiʻi has become the standard by which
traditional hula is defined and reproduced.
Hālau from across Hawaiʻi and the U.S.
8
Maiki Aiu Lake is considered by many to be the “mother” of the
Hawaiian renaissance. For more on kumu Maiki Aiu Lake and her
influence on the Hawaiian renaissance, see web resources for a
link to her hālau’s website.
9
This is not intended to be a complete list of kumu hula whose
dedicated practice ultimately inspired the cultural renaissance.
10
David Kalākaua was nicknamed the Merrie Monarch for his
great love of entertainment and hula. He is celebrated and
remembered for inviting hula back to the royal court for his
inauguration and his birthday jubilee celebrations marking the
first time hula was performed in court since 1830.
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mainland practice diligently to compete with
one another in three categories: Miss Aloha
Hula, hula kahiko, and hula ʻauana. Winners of
the always sold-out event return home
triumphant, having proven their dedication and
expertise in expressing the art form’s esoteric
knowledge.
Unlike the “hula girls” of Hollywood and the
tourist industry, these hula dancers are strong
females and masculine men. Their dances evoke
the divine mana legendarily associated with
Hawaiʻi’s most powerful gods, goddesses, and
aliʻi, as hula’s cultural practitioners use the
competition stage to continually define, in their
own terms, what kinds of vocabulary and
choreography and song selection best produce
traditional hula for contemporary practitioners
and viewers.
A more recently introduced hula event occurs
on the concert stage. These popular eveninglength productions provide more flexibility than
competition hula for kumu hula to stage new
narratives or to re-imagine ancient mythologies
through their unique hula choreographies.
Kumu hula who are well-versed in traditional
hula craft Native-inspired spectacles to dazzle
and educate contemporary Hawaiian and nonHawaiian audiences.
genealogical pasts via the ʻāina and their
ancestors.
As the Hawaiian diaspora and hula’s popularity
continue to grow, teachers, dancers, viewers,
and researchers alike are tasked with
understanding their own kuleana
(responsibility) in dancing hula: they are asked
to remember the lessons of Hawaiʻi’s past while
translating these lessons for future generations.
For full citations to works referenced in this
essay, see Selected Resources for Further
Research.
Angeline Shaka is a dancer and Visiting
Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Woman’s
University. Originally from Hawaiʻi Island, her
research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first
century hula productions, considering cultural
revitalizations and reclamations of various hula
traditions since the Hawaiian cultural
renaissance in Hawaiʻi as well as in its California
diaspora. She received her Ph.D. in Culture and
Performance from UCLA and her M.A. in
Performance Studies from NYU.
The Future of Hula
There are two famous Hawaiian proverbs: Nānā
I Ke Kumu (Look to the Source) and ʻAʻohe pau I
ke ʻike I ka hālau hoʻokāhi (All knowledge is not
taught in the same school). The first reminds
one to keep sight of one’s roots, i.e.: the
protocols and lessons imparted by one’s kumu
hula, and to keep sight of one’s genealogical—
human and divine—roots. The second reminds
us that there are many valid sources of
knowledge. Both sayings contain important
reminders for today’s hula poʻe (as well as for
those researching hula): hula is a dynamic art
form that has always evolved to accommodate
changing times. Hula also, however, continues
to be “the sinew by which Hawaiian culture
[survives]”www.edithkanakaolefoundation.org.
Hula roots Native Hawaiians to their
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