Merrie Monarch Festival
The Merrie Monarch festival, named after a fun-loving Hawaiian king, is held each year in Hilo, Hawaii, on the island where I live. It's the premier competition event in the world of hula.
If you think that hula is women in grass skirts dancing to ukulele music, you're partly right, although they wear dresses, not grass skirts. That's modern-style hula.
But there is also traditional hula, based on ancient Polynesian dances, in which there's no music, just drums and chanting, and it's performed by men as well as women. Hula groups are either all male or all female. There's no mixed dancing.
The men are always bare-chested for traditional hula, but they usually wear some kind of skirt-like costume. However, occasionally a men's group will show up with more revealing costumes, like this group, Kawaili'ula, in 2019.
And here's the same group in 1994.
Even with skirt-like costumes, a twirling dance movement can give a glimpse of what's underneath, like here in 2017.
Or here, also in 2017.
This video is part of a performance that won the traditional men's hula category in 1986, with minimally-dressed men and a choreographed mock battle. It's definitely not girls in grass skirts making graceful gestures.
4 comments:
so nice and interesting!
Loved it! We went to a very lame luau when we visited because that's tradition, isn't it? But the MEN did the hula, not women. That part was memorable.
A very interesting story, and some great photos and video. Thank you!
I'm Lakota. In many ways, men are expected to be the sexier gender. More paint, more dyes and beads, more jewelry, more skin.
Of course in Hawaii, hula is also more sacred.
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