Merrie Monarch Festival
event
The annual Merrie
Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo,
Big Island of Hawaii, is a week long festival of
cultural events including Hawaii’s
most prestigious
hula competitions at Edith Kanaka’ole stadium. The
hula festival takes place the week after Easter. It
begins with a Ho’olaule’a on Moku
Ola (Coconut
Island) on Easter Sunday in Hilo with lots of music,
food and fun. On Wednesday there is a free hula
exhibition night at the stadium that begins at
6:30pm. Thursday is the solo Miss Aloha Hula
competition, where each dancer performs both hula
kahiko (ancient hula) and hula `auana
(modern
hula). Friday and Sat are the group Kahiki (ancient)
and Auana (modern) hula competition. A grand
parade takes place through Hilo
town Sat morning.
The Merrie Monarch Festival has led to a
renaissance of the Hawaiian culture that is being
passed on from generation to generation.
The
festival includes art exhibits, craft fairs,
demonstrations, performances, a parade that
emphasizes the cultures of Hawaii,
and a three-day
hula competition that has received worldwide
recognition for its historic and cultural significance.
In preparation of the Merrie Monarch Festival,
hula
studios and instructors in Hawaii and on
the U.S.
Mainland hold classes, workshops, and seminars
throughout the year to teach the art of hula, the
meaning of Hawaiian chants and songs, the
Hawaiian language, the making of Hawaiian
clothing and crafts, and the history of the Hawaiian
people.
History of the Merrie Monarch Hula
Festival
The Merrie Monarch Festival began in 1964 and
has evolved into what is now considered to be the
world's most prestigious hula competition. The
festival is named in honor of King David Kalakaua,
the last king of the Hawaiian islands,
whose
coronation in 1883 included public displays of hula,
which had long been buried under rules imposed by
Hawaiian missionaries. Kalakaua ruled for seventeen
years. His reign was marked by a resurgence in
Hawaiian culture, music and included numerous
public performances of hula. Because of his love of
dance and music, Kalakaua was nicknamed, "the
Merrie Monarch." In his memory and in
celebration
of Hawaiian culture, dance and music, the Merrie
Monarch Festival is held each year.
41st Annual Merrie Monarch Hula Festival,
April 2004
From article by Wanda A.Adams, Asssistant
Features
Editor, Honolulu Advertiser, by
permission of
Honolulu Advertiser
“It’s always a little chilly in the evenings at
Kanaka'ole Stadium, the barrel-shaped open-air
stadium that houses the annual Merrie Monarch
Festival hula competition. But this year, some of
the chill may come from a breath of change wafting
through the Merrie
Monarch.
Four first-time halau will compete in the 41st
annual competition, three of them led by younger
or less tried kumu hula. Five of the seven judging
positions have turned over. And, for the
TV
audience, two new commentators will be introduced,
though both of them are intimately acquainted with
that scarred plywood stage.
There are, in effect, two Merrie Monarch Hula
Festivals: the one on TV and the one in the stadium.
Both take place this week. Both will attract capacity
audiences.
But the two are as different as a flower lei and a
well-made crochet lei — equally beautiful and much
appreciated, but different.
There's the show seen by most of Hawai'i, and many
in the world watching via streaming video: three
evenings of hula competition broadcast by KITV-4,
enlivened by commentary, interviews and producer
David Kalama's features on Hawaiian cultural themes.
And there is the actual event, defined by subtle factors
most viewers don't even imagine: the solemn, silent
and slow entry each evening of the royal court, the
pleasant babble of conversation that rises and then is
abruptly cut off as the next performance is announced,
the world-class people-watching and eavesdropping.
"The one part you cannot capture at home is really the
excitement of the audience. And the smell — the
flowers, the ferns, the maile. It just takes
you to a place
where you can envision yourself up in the mountains;
the scent just carries through the stadium," says
longtime judge Noenoelani Zuttermeister-Lewis.
Watchers at home have all the comforts: pupu, an
easy chair, the
bathroom just steps away. They
record and play back, indulge in their own
commentary, channel-flip, make bets on who will
win and even, in some households, pass
out ballots
and try to out-guess the judges.
Then there is the real-life festival in Hilo: a week
of rehearsals, the Kanaka'ole 'ohana's
extraordinary
free Wednesday night ho'ike (hula performance),
craft fairs, a Saturday parade, traffic jams,
booked-up hotels, overcrowded restaurants, flocks
of Japanese hula afficionados and three nights of
intense, sense-saturating hula.
But viewers at home may know more about the
dances than those on the scene. Because what those
in the stadium hear during breaks is ... nothing.
They spend the intervals gossiping and playing
fashion police, standing in the sloooooow lines for
food and the bathroom, buying T-shirts and posters
or — as the hour grows late — sitting numbly,
overwhelmed by the fragrance of flowers, the
mellifluous sound of mele and 'oli
and the
thrumming of feet against the bare wood stage.
'Okoles grow numb and ache from the famously
hard metal folding chairs and bleachers.
And yet who would pass up a chance to experience
the real thing? Almost no one, which is why the
stadium's 2,700 or so spectator seats sell out
months in advance.
The success of the event, says Zuttermeister-Lewis,
is the vision of longtime Merrie Monarch executive
director Dorothy "Auntie Dottie" Thompson, who
last year began to pass some of the duties to her
daughter, assistant director Luana Kawelu, due to ill
health.
Thompson took a small, obscure event in a town
known mainly for its excessive annual rainfall and
attraction for tsunami and made it the most
prestigious hula event in Hawai'i. She did so,
Zuttermeister-Lewis believes, by focusing on the
hula and the language, avoiding excess
commercialism and seeking the advice of
culturally rooted kupuna including
Zuttermeister-Lewis's mother, the late kumu
hula Kau'i Zuttermeister,
as well as Edith
Kanaka'ole, 'Iolani Luahine and others.
"She got the blessing of the older generation,
and that was the right thing to do," said
Zuttermeister-Lewis. "That's what I admire about
her. She just does what she believes is the right
thing to do, and it is because of her wisdom and her
honesty that the halau keep coming back."
Zuttermeister-Lewis says she expects her new job
to be easier than the one she played as judge.
"There are many times when people watching don't
understand exactly what happened, why we voted
the way we did. They think it's favoritism," she
said. "All I can say is it's a very hard job. No one
can pay you enough to sit in that chair for hours
or make up to you all the time you spend reading
the information sheets (detailed descriptions of the
song, dance, adornments filed by kumu hula in
advance). There's a lot of work that goes into this.
And nobody who hasn't done it can know how much
the halau sacrifice to be there, either."
