Hawaiian, Californian hula teams compete in Sacramento. Here’s the story behind the event

The Oakland-based Academy of Hawaiian Arts’ Kane Hula dancers are “notorious” for their attention-grabbing performances.

Invariably, there is a moment — when school founder Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu, sitting with a gourd drum on stage, breaks from a steady chant into ringing song; when his dancers march into view and conquer the stage with percussive hits and rhythmic yells — when the energy level explodes, the audience breaks into cheers and it’s hard not to be swept into the movement.

“Every time they get on stage, they leave the audience wowed. They are fierce,” said Amanda Morales, a hula dancer from Concord-based group Ka ‘Ohi Nani o Mana’olana. “That’s why everyone (in the Hula community) knows Mark, knows AHA.”

For his expressive choreography, Ho’omalu said he has been “critiqued pretty intensely” by more traditional judges. But “there’s a difference between traditional and Hawaiian,” he said, and he’s not afraid to leave behind traditional moves to “entertain and inspire” today’s Hawaiian community. “Hula is Hawaiian and you need to keep it Hawaiian, otherwise it becomes something else.”

The AHA’s four teams will be competing with those fielded by 12 other hula groups at the George Na’ope Hula Festival at the downtown Sacramento Holiday Inn this weekend. The festival returns as an annual celebration of Hawaiian community and culture after a pause due to COVID – and an event for people of all backgrounds, whether familiar with Hawaiian culture or not, to simply come and “feel good” watching.

“Wherever you come from or however you feel, if you’re at a hula competition…I think you would have to try to find ways to not feel good,” said organizer Rick San Nicolas, who founded the festival in 2005.

San Nicolas said he expected around 700 people to show up to the festival at the Holiday Inn near Old Sacramento. By midday Friday, Saturday tickets were already sold out, with “very limited” tickets left for Sunday.

Why hula became competitive

Hula dances were a traditional way that Hawaiian people kept track of their history, San Nicolas said, as the Hawaiian language was exclusively oral before Protestant missionaries that arrived in 1820 developed a written form with Latin characters. Many hulas were also religious in nature.

Today, practicing and performing hula serves a variety of purposes, from preserving Hawaiian culture to being a competition that brings dancers together.

Teams from different halau, or dance schools led by a teacher called a kumu hula, had prepared for as long as a year for the George Na’ope competition. Teams from three halaus traveled from Hawaii, while others came from all over California and one from Nevada.

The first day of the festival on Friday featured solo performances, opening with a playful number by 13-year-old Kekoa Arucan, set to a song performed live by a guitarist and singer from the festival’s house band and originally composed for the opening of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu.

Arucan had been learning hula for four years from San Jose-based Hula Halau ‘O Pi’ilani. This was his first time competing, but after a year practicing for the festival, his goal was first place, he said.

Dancers at Ka ‘Ohi Nani o Mana’olana had been preparing for the festival for six months, practicing four days a week for “at least two to three hours, sometimes more if our director is not satisfied,” said Kristen Apodaca, a member of the group. The halau focuses on one competition and one performance a year. Apodaca said she appreciates the high standard of competition of the George Na’ope festival.

“This practicing and getting challenged to get our dancing up to a certain level — with each event you grow as a dancer, you learn more about dance and also about yourself, what your abilities are,” Apodaca said. “Events like this bring the community together, give an outlet to perform.”

More than a dance

Ho’omalu said that his teaching at AHA goes beyond just dance, including language and cultural learning. Many dancers at AHA are second and third generation immigrants who didn’t grow up in Hawaii. Halaus allow “the Hawaiian community to get together and learn about your own culture.”

“There’s no sense of ability to dance if you don’t know the language, so a lot of time is spent on learning the words and learning ‘Olelo Hawaiian language. We try to give them a well-rounded curriculum to help them round out as a person,” he said.

At Ka ‘Ohi Nani o Mana’olana, only a quarter of the group are of Hawaiian descent. Many halau contain dancers of non-Hawaiian ethnicities, including other Pacific Islanders. Learning hula is an opportunity for non-Hawaiians to understand Hawaiian culture, San Nicolas said.

“They can understand what the words mean that they’re dancing to, so they understand what the story is that they’re trying to portray. And if it’s historical, then they have to understand the feelings of the person that put that story or that melody together to do the hula, to be able to tell this story,” San Nicolas said.

The dances are separated into hula kahiko, or ancient hula, performed with chants and traditional instruments; and hula ‘auana, a more modern style performed to music with singing and stringed instruments. At the George Na’ope Hula Festival, there are separate categories for men and women’s teams of different ages.

Storytelling is still a big part of some hula numbers. Ka ‘Ohi Nani o Mana’olana’s performances have an overarching theme of love, Morales said. All of them are original choreographies.

“The teens are doing young love, crush love. Then we have our 20-30 something class with that new kind of love and then, mature ones they’re having the mature love,” she said.

Morales will also be doing a solo performance, set to an original song called “Sakura” by her brother Steven Espaniola about their nephew who passed away young.

“There were a lot of emotions, a lot of feelings” when the group got on stage for the first time during rehearsals on Thursday, Morales said. “It’s very empowering to be up there with your hula sisters…everyone coming back together and putting themselves out there. Just good vibes.”

Named after a legend

The festival is named after the late influential hula master Georga Na’ope, who founded the Merrie Monarch festival and hula competition in Hawaii in 1963, which San Nicolas described as the “olympics of hula.”

San Nicolas met Na’ope at a hula festival that he attended as a vendor selling hula instruments and traditional Hawaiian featherwork. Na’ope took San Nicolas “under his wing,” he said. After retiring from food service due to a back injury, San Nicolas collaborated with Na’ope to start the George Na’ope Kane Hula Festival in Modesto in 2005 — Kane referring to hula performed by men, initially the category that the competition focused on.

The competition has grown since then, moving to Sacramento and adding categories for men and women in 2012. Today it is known in the hula community as a “small and quaint” but well-respected festival, Ho’omalu said – like Na’ope himself, who was “small physically but a really big man in the hula community.”

From the first year, the competition has had “some of the top hula people in the world” as judges, San Nicolas said. This year’s judges include three former students of Na’ope from Hawaii, as well as Moon Kauakahi, whose group Mākaha Sons of Ni’ihau was inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 2013.

The festival is still organized by San Nicolas’ family, including his wife and four daughters.