Something Fishy at the Dance

Kayla Shumate, age 10, traveling with grandmother, posting from Honolulu, Hawaii—G mom and I went to a hula dance show at Kuhio Beach Park last night. I brought my Hello Kitty towel with me so we could sit on the grass. The music players were playing Hawaiian music and it sounded nice. There were two hula dancers wearing skirts made of tea leaves. First they danced with the uliuli. Uliuli is feathered gourd rattles. The next one was the puili. Puili is bamboo rattles. The final one was ipu. Ipu is a hollow gourd used sort of like a drum. The host told all the newcomers to Hawaii to raise their hands so I raised mine. He said for all the newcomers to come up to the stage. We were going to learn how to hula!

 I came up bare foot and many other people did too. They taught us how to do the Hukilau. Hukilau means “pull leaves.” That is because the nets fisherman use are lined with leaves. So it is about fishing. We learned many dance moves. The ones I remember were waves, fish, come to me, nets, fishing rod, wonderful, and food. I won’t explain them all but I’ll explain one. I will explain “wonderful.” First you have your hands down. You cross them and you are lifting your hands up while doing this and you uncross them. You throw them up in the air like the picture of my brother on G moms  car and that is the sign for wonderful. After learning the signs and moves, we danced the Hukilau. Then G mom took my picture with one of the hula dancers. We walked along the beach to our hotel after it was over.