HILO, Hawai’i, the wee hours of Friday morning — Do you know how many gray Impala rental cars there are in Hilo? I do because when I came out of the Merrie Monarch Miss Aloha Hula competition tonight at midnight, I put my car key into every one of them.
OK, so that’s my babooze me story for the night. I did find my car at last and I did get home. But the delay in finding it is one reason my blog didn’t get posted last night. By the time I got home … late, exhausted … writing between bites of a cold plate lunch, I was falling asleep mid-sentence.

Let’s talk hula.

Random notes from Miss Aloha Hula night:

I wrote this: “You know how every little girl wants to be a bride in a fabulous white dress. … Every Island girl wants to be Miss Aloha Hula, dancing in a dress with a fitted top and a full skirt flowing around her and the Makaha Sons or the Caz or that hunky Kaumaka’iwa Kanaka’ole singing their hearts out for you.” And right after I wrote that, I turned and, behind me, was the most gorgeous little girl, watching Miss Aloha Hula with her mother (who was a great help to me in identifying flowers as we watched the dancers). I asked the little girl if someday she wanted to be on that stage and she said, “No, everyone would be looking at you.” So, so much for my deep insights into the minds of young women.

Possible color trend (not as clear as in some years): red/russet/maroon/burgundy….moving over into fuschia/pink/rose. (Of course, this year, the official T-shirt is red, for the lehua, flower of Hilo.)

Possible flower trend: Pikake. The scent is everywhere and numerous gorgeous pikake colors and longer lei were seen on competitors as well as spectators. Although puakenikeni did make a big showing: There was one contestant that had like 6 strands, maybe 8, to her knees!

Best overheards of the day: Tehani to Paula, “Just put your head down and keep going.” To understand how funny this is, you have to know that Tehani and Paula are TV personalities and they’re trying to get to the bathroom during a station break and people keep stopping them to talk story. And the bathroom lines at Merrie Monarch? Even for VIPS, who have a special lua; even if you have access to the honey buckets in the back … it can take a while to go benjo. I missed a whole song!

Another overheard: Just before Miss Aloha Hula first runner-up Kapalai’ula de Silva put her foot on the ramp to go on stage, her mother, who is also her kumu hula (teacher), Mapuana de Silva of storied Halau Mohala Ilima, whispered, “Have fun.” I was a few feet away, and I may have heard it incorrectly, but I think that’s what she said. Even if that’s not exactly right, you could not mistake the love that infused her expression and flowed out from her. I’ve been privileged to watch Mapuana de Silva in rehearsal a few times and she is so quiet and so centered and so expressive of positive values as she gently but firmly teaches. She is the mother all of us have wanted to have.

And “have fun”… what an enlightening thing to say to someone who is about to do something so demanding and frightening and potentially life-changing. There is no technical correction that can make a difference at the last minute. They’re ready or they’re not. So giving the person permission to have fun … how right.
It looked to me like Ms. De Silva did have fun, because she finished the night in a flat tie with the winner and it was only the complex numerical tie-breaker system that Merrie Monarch has in place that was able to mke a decision between winner Kalimakuhilani A. K. Suganuma and de Silva.
Both of them delivered performances that had me — a hula lover but very far from a hula expert— gasping out loud.
Among my notes is one that says”hands to face!” I was making note of the number of times I unconsciously slapped my hands to my face, dropped my jaw, cried out in awe … watching these Miss Aloha Hula competitors.

Another note says, “How good can we get?” — meaning how much more can these dancers achieve? Although we can quibble about song choice and such, the quality of the language usage, the depth of research, the chanting technique. … I’ve only been covering MM for five years and the increased sophistication, dedication to delving into the deeper meaning and ability to even play with the language in the way pre-contact Hawaiians loved to do is astonishing today compared to just a few years ago.
When Kalimakuhilani Suganuma was dancing her kahiko number, my notes read: “This is one of those difficult moments when, if you don’t speak the language, or know hula intimately, you can’t be sure how good the dancer is. But it looks to me like she’s very, very good. She has become the dance.”
It’s not that there was no one writing mele or doing research or playing with words five years ago (just think back to the year one of the men’s halau used Puakea Nogelmier’s nematode song). What’s different is that there are so many more people able to do it, as the Hawaiians so eloquently say, who are ma’a to it. The language, and with it the whole complex thing that is a culture, is seeping through our lives like water, spreading, finding its level, rising. It’s beautiful to see.

And speaking of beautiful … I’m going to file this now. It’s just before 7 a.m. Poli’ahu the snow goddess is doing things on top of Mauna Kea that are illegal in five states … the rosy tint of the dawn, the trailing line of mist, the bright white shining snow … ohmigosh. If only you could all be here with us!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Hula, Merrie Monarch, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.