M akuakane has met with all three of his guest artists separately to conceptualize original pieces that celebrate the tradi- tional status of mahu as cultural stan- dard bearers, artisans, and healers. In Kaumakaiwa, in particular, he found an ambassador of mahu, someone who has thought deeply about the mean- ing of the word not just culturally but artistically. “In Hawai’i, we don’t have gendered pronouns,” she told a hula class in a Zoom lecture. “There is no such thing as ‘she’ or ‘he.’ It’s just ‘o ia.’” The term mahu literally trans- lates to a state of being and doesn’t refer to a specific gender. It encompasses everything, the entire breadth of gender expression.” With a collaborator like Kaumakaiwa (he calls her his “linchpin”), something new began to happen that took even Makuakane by surprise. Call it collaboration, alchemy, or just the magic of finding a new muse. “I’m directing her, but I’m stimulated by her, and she by me,” he says. “I’ve never hid the fact that I am gay, but in this show I can internalize that. I can ask myself, ‘What does it mean for me to do a show called MAHU ?’ I can step into a self that is always there, though perhaps hidden a bit, or pro- tected. It allows me to inhabit that self fully.” He clearly enjoys the flamboyance of these guest artists. “Every song is a parade, and who doesn’t love a parade?” he says. “The combination of guest artists is allowing me to go all out . Every choreographer wants that!” “For this show, everything is being reexamined,” Makuakane told Hawaii Public Radio. “People are going to see a combination of different musical styles, of costumes, of traditional, modern and contemporary dancing, chanting. I mean, I don’t like linear. I don’t like to start with tradi- tion and then move through time to end up in contempo- rary times. I love to mix them all up. Because I feel that’s what my life is. I’m one big wheel collecting everything as I move throughout the day.”
Kaumakaiwa’s off-the-charts music, which synthesizes the esoteric spirit of chanting with the beats of Michael Jackson and the vocals of Adele, is the perfect comple- ment to hula mua , Makuakane’s signature dance inven- tion. The verb mua means “to progress,” and Makuakane defines hula mua as dance that “takes from the past and brings to the future.” Its movements rely on the vocabu- lary of ‘auana and kahiko , but the music is all over the map (including techno and pop and opera and everything in between). And many of the “traditional” movements are stylized—“tweaked and exaggerated,” with other movements occasionally mixed in—a little modern dance, maybe, a little Broadway, a little hip hop. “We are taking hula to new places—not just physi- cal places, but also artistic and emotional places,” he explains. “I’m broadening my context of hula, reminding us that tradition and innovation can coexist in meaningful and surprising ways.” One example of hula mua in the show is the number “Lovely Hinahina,” which I watched at rehearsal in the gym, when rows of “rubber slippahs”—zoris and flip flops—marked out a stage on the basketball floor. The lyr- ical love song, written by Kaumakaiwa’s mother Kekuhi, describes the breeze “bearing witness” as the singer catches a glimpse of her dear lovely hinahina. The mem- ory of her is “presented on wings feathered by the breeze,” a breeze that whispers and stirs my affections. The melody is hardly lyrical, though: the beat of the guitar, drums, and synthesizer—as well as the rapid fire chanting—it is made urgent and visceral. For thirty minutes, 23 dancers, in two flocks, practiced entering and going through several formations in which they are birds, lifting their long arms in gentle waves, flut- tering their fingers, moving their feet in a hula bourée, let- ting their bodies lower in lunges and pliés and then rise on tiptoes again. The choreographer calls out makeshift names for the moves—“bird wave,”“ kai ,” “whisper.” ( Kai is the Hawai- ian word for water, and in hula it is usually expressed with a precise wave movement of the arms at the hips.) “I just want you to mooooove,” he says, “but not too move-y.” He demonstrates with his own body. “Make your kai’s as smooth as possible, sweep and roll with your body: whisper into bird wave into kai.” As I watch them work over and over on a very small segment, with lots of impromptu changes, Makuakane choreographing on the bodies before him, proposing something, looking at it, changing it, I am reminded that a critic from the Los Angeles Times once compared the “ineffably smooth unison” of the Na Lei Hulu dancers with “the best corps de ballet” and described a “lasting aftereffect something like having seen flowers that breathe and butterflies that think.”
Na Lei Hulu presents MAHU Oct 22-23, 2022 Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, San Francisco naleihulu.org
CONSTANCE HALE is a California journalist who has been writing about Hawaiian culture for three decades. Her award-winning features on hula, slack-key guitar, the sovereignty movement, the Hawaiian language, Big Island cowboys, and Spam musubi have appeared in the Atlantic , National Geographic Adventure , Afar , Smithsonian , the Los Angeles Times , the Miami Herald , and Honolulu . She has written five books on language and literary style, including the best-selling Sin and Syntax . She has also written a book for children, ‘ Iwalani‘s Tree . Hale, who was born in Hawai‘i, started dancing the hula at seven and has studied with Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne for twenty-five years. Her biography of him, The Natives Are Restless , was published in 2016.
Strengthening Communities. Catalyzing Inclusion. Cultivating Belonging.
MOSAICAMERICA.ORG
26
in dance FALL 2022 26
FALL 2022 in dance 27
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
unify strengthen amplify unify strengthen amplify
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker