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Culture

Disciples of the Academy of Hawaiian Arts

This individuality is so Oakland. At the same time, the haumana say they’re more Hawaiian than the islanders.

Are These Dancers the Rock Stars of Hula?

     From the parking lot of a semi-deserted strip mall in East Oakland, you hear the chanting. A strong male voice belts out a melodious torrent of words in a voice strong enough to put over a punk anthem. Inside a converted retail space, evening light gleams on a polished wooden floor where women in gathered white cotton skirts move in unison to the belly-bumping throb of a gourd drum as big as a goat. As they rehearse, they move like a flock of birds, seeming to sense when the singer, a tall man with a topknot, brown as a coconut and lean as a palm tree, wants them to repeat a misstep.
     The singer is Mark Ho’omalu, the founder of the Academy of Hawaiian Arts and leader of this halau, or hula school. The dancers at this bi-weekly women’s class practice with double urgency, readying for this fall’s Ia ’Oe E Ka La Hula Festival in Pleasanton and Waikiki show at Chabot College Performing Arts Center in Hayward.
     Mark Ho’omalu is an inspired musician and an accomplished craftsman. He’s also a self-described troublemaker, and he’s been shaking up the hula community with more than his dancers.
     Ho’omalu grew up on Oahu, and found his life’s path by chance. “I hear about people being predestined to do stuff. I think it’s a crock,” he says. “I went to my first hula class with a friend who didn’t want to go by himself. There were chicks all over the place. I said, ‘I’m coming here every day.’ ”
     At that first halau, hula was just about entertainment for him. Then, he began to study with Darrell Lupenui, the kumu hula credited with reinvigorating male hula. Lupenui always told him, “Do your best and do your own.” Ho’omalu ran with that, composing new songs, chants and dances to add to the tradition instead of sticking to what’s been passed down.
     He moved to Oakland in 1988 to work at an established halau before founding his own academy in 2003. At first, the academy students practiced in parks until he found the big, cheap space in Foothill Square that the troupe still uses.
     It was kismet, because there’s a lot that’s Oaklandish about Ho’omalu and AHA, plenty to earn them the nickname “The Raiders of Hula”: They flout tradition by ignoring some of the gender-based roles, and the style of dancing can be more aggressive than that of other troupes.
     And then there’s Ho’omalu’s delight in playing against expectations of how a kumu hula, or hula teacher, should act.
     Admirers say he simply gives hula a more modern flavor; purists complain that he’s too theatrical and doesn’t respect the traditions. The theme song he co-wrote for the movie Lilo and Stitch exemplifies this split. It’s Hawaiian music for Disney, dominator of indigenous mainland culture.
     His insistent drumming style has a rock ’n’ roll edge, another thing that gets the goat of fundamentalists who cringe at the way he hits the top of the double gourd drum instead of the side. He also creates intricate — and nontraditional — beats for the ’uli ’uli, rattles that are meticulously handmade by the students. Whenever an old-timer criticizes the way his dancers interpret a dance, it just sends him further down his own path.
     “When do you become responsible for your own s*** instead of saying, ‘My mother, my father, my grandmother, my great-grandfather taught me this’? ” he asks indignantly.
“He doesn’t disrespect their rules, but he bends them,” says Jennifer Wadahara, one of the hula students, known as haumana. “When we go to a competition, we don’t dance to win. We dance to make a point.”
     With all the development in Hawaii, Ho’omalu barely recognizes where he grew up. Meanwhile, the longing they feel keeps them from taking their spiritual home for granted.
     “We call the barrio home too, but Hawaii is our mother. All of us that are from back home that live here, we become a little bit more proud,” says dancer Justin Santos. He realized the irony when he rowed a handmade canoe with Ho’omalu in the San Francisco Bay: It was an experience he would never have had in Hawaii. Santos says, “In the nine years I’ve been with him, I’ve learned more about how to be a Hawaiian man than in the 12 years I grew up there.”
     Find out more about the Academy of Hawaiian Arts at AcademyofHawaiianArts.org.

Finding the Island of Alameda
     Two Hawaiian transplants are flourishing on the island of Alameda, where they are helping to revitalize the hula tradition.
     Web designer Kamali’i Bingham grew up on Oahu, moving to the mainland in 1995 and reaching Alameda in 2008. It reminds her of Kailua, one of the small towns that dot the coast on the windward side of Oahu.
     She already knew Mark Ho’omalu’s music, so she was thrilled that she could work with him. In addition to her love of kahiko, the older form of the music that uses chant and traditional instruments, she found that hula allows her to maintain her bond with home. “It allows me to remain connected to Hawaiian things,” she says. “Somehow, through it, you feel connected to the land. You’re brought to those places while you’re dancing.”
     You might find Kainani Hartnett sitting on the beach, playing her ukulele, or maybe practicing with her class of keiki, the youngsters in the music program she teaches through the Academy of Hawaiian Arts.
      Hartnett began playing Hawaiian music on her guitar to ease her homesickness when she went to college in Colorado. She soon joined a casual hula group that specialized in performances for small groups. When she came to Alameda in 2003, she says, “I knew I had to find another hula group. As soon as I went to visit AHA, I felt it was the right place for me. This halau is very different, because we have such an amazing, creative leader.”
      Like Bingham, she’s found a spiritual home in the halau. “Being part of the halau makes me not need to go back as much. I connect with other people who have the same feeling I do about hula music and dancing. What I need is here.”