Review: Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu
March 15th, 2008, 12:39 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Laura Bleiberg
Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu, pictured in a previous show.
In ancient Hawaii, “unskilled love-making was socially unacceptable.” Director Patrick Makuakāne.
Because I’ve lived and shivered in foggy San Francisco (year-round, I might add), I think of it as an incongruous place for Hawaii’s dance, the hula.
Regardless, the San Francisco-based hula troupe Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkuiu is a thriving, highly regarded community and performing arts organization. Its founder and director, Honolulu-native Patrick Makuakāne, is an impressive speaker and I was eager to see Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkuiu on its return to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach this weekend. The second show is today.
Makuakāne has done for hula what others have done for other populist forms, such as Igor Moiseyev with Russian folk dance, and Ana María Alvarez with salsa dance. Makuakāne has taken traditional hula and modernized it. That is, he puts traditional choreography in a non-traditional context, putting hula steps to recorded, non-hula music (K.D. Lang and Sinéad O’Connor, for example). He creates story tableaux that are contemporary in style. He also presents wholly traditional hula with live Hawaiian song and instruments.
He narrates the show with authority and with folksy personal anecdotes, so it’s no trouble to follow what’s happening. A large part of his aim is educating the wider public about native Hawaiian culture — from the perspective of the Polynesian peoples.
Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu’s latest show “Daughters of Haumea,” is based on a book of the same name (authors Lucia Tarallo Jensen and her daughter Natalie Mahina Jensen were in attendance).
“Daughters” depicted goddesses, fisherwomen, feather-workers, an oracle (the striking Linda Kaholo), and, in one striking scene, the wailing women who prepare the dead for burial.
It’s a large company (I counted 24 women and 12 men, plus Makuakāne and several guest artists, including a cameo from former Paul Taylor dancer Rachel Berman). There is mix of body types and ages; some are from the islands, and some are not. To my untrained eye, Makuakāne has schooled and coached this group to a very high level.
The traditional hulas were mesmerizing. The swaying of hips and shifting of body weight from one foot to the other was done with deliberate weightiness but also with grace. The whole lower body is like a drum set, establishing the all-important bass rhythm. It’s a fairly complex language, with popping heels and a deep-seated stance. The arm motions have their own meanings, each gesture signifying a certain word. To a woman, the Nā Lei Hulu dancers mastered the exacting smoothness of the arms, not too light, and never too flowery. This level of fluidity and purpose was like watching waves, not surprisingly — a trance-inducing spectacle.
Hula is often subtle, at least compared with so much frantic contemporary dance styles. (There’s also a martial arts-type dance, but that’s for another story.) When hula is done effectively, and this certainly was, even a simple twist in the torso from front to back can pull the viewer into the picture.
Not all of the scenes were effective. Makuakāne’s depiction of how a young man and woman are educated in the ways of love-making was tasteful but hokey, especially the gauzy video used as backdrop. Likewise, a tableaux of the female ancestress as reptile, with the women crawling about the stage, was unconvincing, to put it kindly.
On the other hand, singer-musicians Lihau Hannahs and Kellen Paik entertained with glorious harmonies. Makuakāne’s chanting was lovely.
This kind of dance spectacle takes a singular kind of balancing act, between past and present, old style and new. Despite a few missteps, Makuakāne has his feet well-planted.
