W hen ancient Hawaiian carvers would take mate- rial from the natural environment—whether a tree or a bone or a piece of stone—and then begin to shape it into a figure destined for a temple or other sacred place, they had a word for the unfinished work, the in-between entity: mahu. Outside of that ritual process, the word was also used in a different sense, to refer to people whose gender identity was fluid, neither kane (male) nor wahine (female). But once missionaries arrived in Hawai‘i in 1820 with their Calvin- istic properties, and once American culture overwhelmed Hawai‘i, the noun mahu lost its expansiveness. Today the wehewehe.org dictionary defines it as “homosexual” or “hermaphrodite.” And, unfortunately, it can be used in a downright pejorative sense. That’s the mahu San Francisco Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakane remembers from his teenage years in Hawai‘i, when he started to realize that he was gay. But attitudes are changing in the islands, much as they are nationally, and the groundbreaking choreographer aims to encourage us all to reimagine the term. To do so, he has invited outstanding mahu entertainers from Hawai‘i to collaborate with his company, Na Lei Hulu i ka Wekiu. And he will use his latest show, MAHU , which premieres on October 22, to spotlight the unique Hawaiian concept of a fluid gender. “Transgender issues are in the zeitgeist, and I was thinking of the many talented mahu people in Hawai‘i,” says Makuakane, who wrote a grant proposal for the show in 2019 and has had to wait two years to be able to perform it. “I thought, What if I did a show with In his latest show, MĀHŪ, San Francisco hula master Patrick Makuakāne explores the Hawaiian concept of a fluid gender and an openness to the third self. Stepping into the In-Between
PHOTO BY PATRICK MAKUAKĀNE BY CONSTANCE HALE
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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