Letter from the Director of Still & Moving Center

Aloha  <<First Name>>!

Rumblings beneath the surface… of the land, of ourselves, of external events… What can we pick up? How can we metaphorically dance with and shape those rumblings? How do we live a more intentional life?

“Day and night the ancient forest was ablaze, and the scene was vivid beyond description. By the 25th of March [1881] the lava was within seven miles of Hilo, and steadily advancing... On the 10th of August it was but one mile from the sea, and half a mile from Hilo town.” (Coan)

Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani 
travelled to the island of Hawai’i from O’ahu to intercede with Pele, goddess of lava, when called upon by the people of Hilo. There, in front of the lava flow, the princess performed a ceremony and chant asking Pele to spare Hilo. She even camped directly in the line of its molten course. And the lava did stop.

Is it possible that several powerful women of hula predicted 2 decades ago - or possibly caused or directed - the volcanic eruptions that took place on Big Island in 2018? Please note as you read this letter that the same hula aunty, Pualani, is now at the forefront of the Maunakea protest… and wonder, as I do, what is brewing.

I’ve spent the last year musing over the events surrounding the 5th World Hula Conference in Hilo that I attended with my kumu hula Malia last June, 2018, during a nearby volcanic eruption. The founders of the conference brought home to us the intimate, deep level connection that we human beings share with the natural world - and it shook me to the core.

Some might say that several powerful Hawaiian women played out the Princess Ruth story with Pele in a different way this time. 

The timing of Conference events gives rise to speculation that these hula masters with their students had either predicted and/or caused the 2018 volcanic eruptions that were taking place on the island of Hawai'i within a few miles of where we were learning, chanting and dancing - in exactly the spots and ways described in the chants. 

Nearly two decades ago, three esteemed Hawaiian women, all kumu hula (traditionally trained hula teachers), led by Aunty Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, decided that the time had come to present hula to the world in a more authentic manner. They therefore created the first World Hula Conference on the Big Island in Hilo in 2001, to offer a higher level of education in hula dance and culture. 

The movement of the 5 conferences followed the journey of the young goddess Hi’iaka from the island of Hawai'i to Maui, to O’ahu, Kaua’i and back to Hilo. Hi’iaka gathered her power and self-knowledge through experience. On her trip, Hi’iaka fights a number of mo’o (giant lizards), brings her sister Pele’s dead lover back to life, then battles her sister Pele, to re-establish harmony.  

For over a year before the final world hula conference in 2018, hula halau (schools) around the world, and especially on the Big Island, prepared for the conference by studying specific oli (chants) and hula dances about Pele and Hi’iaka.  

The oli that we learned went back into the night of Hawaiian history. They outlined one locale after another of volcanic activity that took place in the battle between the two sister goddesses. Hi’iaka had returned from the arduous journey that her sister Pele had sent her on, only to find that Pele had killed her best friend and destroyed her favorite groves of lehua trees - all with jealousy rather than gratitude for Hi’iaka bringing Pele’s lover Lo’eau back from the dead.

As our halau began our studies early in 2018, Malia and I wondered why these particularly bombastic chants and dances were being chosen for this culminating conference. We REALLY started wondering once Kilauea on the Big Island began erupting in May.

By the time we arrived for the Conference on June 13, Halemaumau crater’s rim had collapsed, rift zones were spurting up and lava was rolling down to the sea. Our helicopter ride with our halau gave a panoramic spectacle of Nature in full motion. As my amateur volcanologist husband Cliff likes to say, “Geological time includes NOW!”

What did it all mean? Why were art and Nature so closely aligned?!?

Aunty Pualani let us know that true hula is an alignment at our deepest level with elemental Nature. We need to know what we are chanting and dancing about! Our words and our movements activate more than our minds and bodies…. How much more is hard to say.

Participating in the opening ceremony at the Edith Kanakaole stadium on June 17th with many hundreds of other dancers pouring onto the floor like waves of golden lava was one of the most overwhelming sensory and soul experiences of my life.

The hula dances we strove to master required all of my agility, strength and stamina, as we turned and dropped into deep squats, traveling quickly across the floor. Arms and hands, head and eyes, feet, ankles, knees and hips - all moving in tight, forceful choreography - conveyed the throb and thunder of rolling, crunching lava explosions and flows.

As our primary hula, we were chanting and dancing “A popoi haki kai ko’o ka lua,” meaning ‘the cover is breaking, falling apart’. The same chant references “popoi Kilauea”, the cover of the volcano that was erupting. The cover of Halema’uma’u, the crater and home of Pele, had just collapsed in on itself on May 3rd, 2018. 

And now, in mid June, 2018, lava was flowing out into all the areas that our chants were describing on that part of the island, such as the area called Keahialaka in our oli, which is the Leilani Estates land where so many homes were being lost to this lava flow - right as we danced. The hula conference ended June 24, and by September 4, 2018, Pele also had stopped her dancing and subsided back, leaving a vastly changed landscape on the Big Island.

Here’s the key point we learned about Hi’iaka: She is the force REGENERATION - which all of us can be, too.

The underlying story behind this 5 conference series focused not on the destruction wrought by Pele, the lava, but on the spiritual growth and development of Hi’iaka, the force of new life that FOLLOWS devastation. 13.7 square miles of existing land was covered by the 2018 lava flow, with 875 acres of new land poured and formed in the ocean. Pele creates new, black, barren land and it is her sister Hi’iaka who brings the lava-covered land back to life, such as with the remarkable sprouting of lehua trees.

As Aunty Pualani explained to us, the very reason Pele sent the young Hi’iaka on her multiple-island quest was for her to grow into her divinity as she faced and overcame one obstacle after another, developing her skills of discernment and discovering her true power, even in battling her sister. 

So did these women of hula who planned this conference two decades ago foresee or bring about the volcanic activity? Or do they so deeply attune themselves to Nature and its rumblings beneath the surface that they could beneficently act and co-create life right along with her? Gotta wonder!

No one died in all of the volcanic activity going on as we hula’d. Kilauea volcano was giving plenty of notice, allowing people to get out of her way. Yes, property was damaged or covered completely, but the people were safe, as if the vast volcanic event was DANCING its way in, not fully raging. And Pele’s lava would be succeeded by Hi’iaka’s emblematic lehua tree, a fire-following plant that helps start regrowth after lava. 

We, as fortunate conference attendees, were gifted beyond measure with the accumulated wisdom, experience and artistry of this hula lineage, so that we, too, might grow our insight and cultivate our power to heal the land and its people.

Let me, like my kumu, Malia, notice the droplet lingering beneath the leaf, the red-glowing rainbow on the horizon, an iwa bird in flight, the flutter of concern across an elder’s face, the flush of innocent pride welling up in a youngster’s eyes. I want to pick up and be responsive to the ripple beneath the surface.