Word: hula
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some still endure. Most of the ancestor gods are gone now, but on the Big Island, the fire and volcano goddess Pele still lives. She is not worshiped, say modern-day Hawaiians, but she is acknowledged, and in the fiery and overflowing caldera of Kilauea she rules. The first hula, it is said, was chanted and danced in Pele's praise by her younger sister Hi'iaka. Recently Zuttermeister and some 25 other splendid hula performers, the spiritual descendants of Hi'iaka, brought their art to the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. It was not modern dance, which...
When Zuttermeister was young, the ancient, traditional hula -- hula kahiko -- had nearly died out. Islanders with Hawaiian blood took little pride in their ancestry, and cellophane-skirt-and-ukulele imitation hulas were staged mostly for tourists. But her husband Carl, a German immigrant, was proud of Kau'i's Hawaiian blood and persuaded her to learn what her uncle had to teach...
...others of that generation also learned from their elders, and by the early 1970s mainland ethnic-pride movements had strong echoes in the islands. Now there is little danger that the old hula forms will die. Zuttermeister has passed on the chants and dance movements, exactly as she learned them, to her daughter Noenoelani Zuttermeister Lewis, 43, and her granddaughter Hauolionalani Lewis, 20. Public schools today teach hula as part of the cultural history of the islands. Teams taught by hula masters compete in hula dance-offs that are approximately as well attended as high school basketball tournaments in Indiana...
Noenoelani, kneeling, chants and finger taps the puniu, a small coconut- shell drum lashed to the thigh, and thumps the pahu hula, a larger sharkskin- covered drum. Hauolionalani, leis at wrists and ankles, head erect, chants a formal request -- "Let me in, I'm cold" -- to be admitted to the halau, or dance school. Noenoelani replies as the teacher, "Come in, all I have to offer is my voice . . ." Her daughter begins the rhythmic, liquid swaying of the hula...
Resurgent ethnic pride has brought about a revival of the authentic Hawaiian hula, with its rhythmic swaying and impudent eroticism...