Oahu kumu hula Vicky Holt Takamine said she plans to use her $50,000 award from United States Artists to take her students on more cultural and learning exchange trips and to create new works, including a Hawaiian musical production sharing the mele and stories of Queen Liliuokalani.
Takamine, who heads Pua Ali‘i ‘Ilima, was one of 46 artists selected as 2016 fellows by the Chicago-based program, which honors innovative artists across nine creative disciplines.
“We don’t do this work thinking about getting rewarded for it, because we love it. We do the work because we’re passionate about it,” said Takamine, 69, who was officially named a USA Doris Duke Fellow in the category of traditional arts.
USA was created in 2006 by the Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson and Prudential foundations to address the lack of funding available to artists, according to its website. The awards, announced Wednesday, can be used to support the recipient’s artistic and professional development.
Takamine began studying hula at the age of 12 and is a graduate of the late kumu hula Maiki Aiu Lake.
The mother of three and grandmother of four founded Pua Ali‘i ‘Ilima in 1977 and has brought her students to cultural festivals throughout Hawaii and the world and served as a judge for the Merrie Monarch Festival.
She is also founder of the PA‘I Foundation, a Honolulu nonprofit that supports Native Hawaiian arts and culture through the annual Maoli Arts Month cultural festival and fashion show.
Under the USA program, individual artists are nominated from the creative disciplines of architecture and design, crafts, dance, literature, media, music, theater and performance, traditional arts and visual arts, and then invited to apply for the fellowships. Past recipients include kumu hula Robert Cazimero and Hokulani Holt-Padilla.
In her application, Takamine wrote, “Hula is the art of Hawaiian dance that expresses everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel. … Hula is not just a form of entertainment, but is the ritual, sacred, powerful and dynamic expression of our people, both past and present. Hula is an extremely powerful performing art form and is a form of resistance.”
