Hula fest tells Hawaii’s story

It’s ironic that when the first Merrie Monarch Festival convened in 1964, it was designed as an attraction for tourists to help Hilo recover economically from the devastating tsunami of 1960 (there had been another scare that year, but the really bad one happened four years earlier).

The town still has that lovely bay seemingly shaped expressly to funnel tsunami waves inland, but it’s been spared that kind of wave in the intervening years. In its place, the festival in honor of King David Kalakaua has been a lure to a tidal wave of visitors. Most are hula aficionados, or they are by the time they leave.

This year is an especially rollicking occasion, given the 50th anniversary celebration. Hula has been part of the festival throughout, but the competition itself, by far the centerpiece event, only began in 1971. That three-night contest, the culmination of the weeklong festival, begins tonight with soloists contending for the Miss Aloha Hula title.

Many renowned dancers in the hula world got a boost by winning this crown. The first was Aloha Dalire, the kumu hula whose three daughters also claimed the top prize and pursued the hula discipline as dancers and teachers in their own right.

Friday and Saturday nights are for the halau competition, with individual schools entering a corps of dancers to interpret a group hula. First is the spirited kahiko division, showcasing hula in its ancient tradition, and then there’s the ‘auana, or contemporary style.

The Merrie Monarch is known as Hawaii’s pre-eminent hula event, but it’s one of an annual series of competitions that have accomplished two things for the art form.

One is that they’ve raised the profile of hula internationally. The roster of countries where there is at least one halau grows longer every year, with Japan far out in front of non-Hawaiian hula enthusiasts.

The other is that they’ve raised the standards for performance at hula schools. At the Merrie Monarch, one of the less-known but prized honors is the award for performance in language.

The hula competition evolved along with the Hawaiian cultural renaissance that reinvigorated study of Hawaiian language, so many of the best dancers were also feted for their skill at delivering the poetry of hula.

The Merrie Monarch competition — always a packed house with ticket-holders from around the world — has been covered by many TV and film crews over the years, elevating the understanding of Hawaii’s most celebrated art forms. It’s the electric movements of kahiko, the fluidity of ‘auana, the intricate harmonies of the music, the haunting sounds of chant. It’s the sumptuous costuming, the adornments of lei and hula implements.

Beyond its rich sensory elements, however, hula rises above all as a dramatic form of storytelling. The legends of Hawaii’s past, the lyricism and vivid imagery of the text, tell more about Hawaii than virtually any other exposition one might devise.

For fulfilling that role and giving hula the prominence it deserves, the Merrie Monarch Festival has earned the thanks — and happy birthday wishes, of course — from all who love Hawaiian culture.