Merrie Monarch

HILO — Halau O Kekuhi rocked the Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium Wednesday night with a spellbinding series of chants and dances illustrating a portion of the stormy saga of Pele and Hi‘iaka. And that was just the start.

The Merrie Monarch Festival’s signature exhibition, the Ho‘ike, brought together performers from across the Pacific, from Hilo to California, Japan to Easter Island, before a screaming audience of thousands who packed like smiling sardines into the stands.

The televised competition begins tonight with the Miss Aloha Hula competition.

But Wednesday night, the juried contest was far from the minds of many as they settled in for a celebration of hula and its calabash cousins.

As always, it was up to Halau O Kekuhi to set the bar high, and they delivered.

They opened with a mele titled “Ke Ka‘ao No Pele,” a migration chant of Pele and her family that covered their journey to Hawaii from kahiki. Rising up the ramp below a dark gray sky, they crouched low and chanted the volcanic weather phenomena that accompanied Pele’s mythical family on the migration. They performed a strenuous hula noho, or seated hula, using an ipu heke.

The keiki students were next with a mele called “Aloha O‘ahu,” a chant performed by Pele’s sister Hi‘iaka as she traveled across the channel between Oahu and Kauai. They also performed a set of mele set with Hi‘iaka on the Waianae coast.

As kumu Nalani Kanaka‘ole explained, this year the halau’s performance portrayed a legendary feast thrown at Makua, Oahu, as Hi‘iaka ascends into the uplands and receives a vision of her friend Hopoe, destroyed by Pele in Puna. (It’s a long story.)

“We wanted to do something that was out of the ordinary style of hula,” she said, explaining why the chants dealt with the little-known legend of the deity Kapo, “because most people don’t know that style or that kind of hula,” Kanaka‘ole said. But Kapo is essential to the story of Hi‘iaka, “which is why we do it. Very spiritual.”

As the halau left the stage for the final time the audience rose to give it a standing ovation.

Next came Halau Hula ‘O Lima Nani, from Japan. Led by kumu Kei Inouye and affiliated with Na Lei O Kaholoku, the halau is based in Tokyo and Osaka and boasts 500 members, of whom 185 dancers — no, that’s not a typo — graced the stage.

They performed several mele that honored the Big Island, including one that the kumu’s daughter Maki Inouye wrote while she was spending time in Hilo. She was inspired to describe the beauty of the rain forest of Volcano and Pele.

“My haumana, wonderful,” Kei Inouye said while watching her students from backstage. “Good job.”

In an email she sent to the Tribune-Herald shortly before the performance, she wrote: “We feel so much aloha from the people that welcome us with their arms and hearts wide open,” she said. The halau has members who range from the 20s and 30s to the 60s, 70s and even 80s, “mainly housewives and some working women.”

For the finale, the dancers massed on stage in shimmering gold dresses to perform “The Wonderful World of Aloha.” Inouye described it as a tribute to the late Uncle George Na‘ope, “who taught us about aloha.”

After the Japan halau came Na Lei O Kaholoku, with a performance that left mouths agape and had people asking, “How’d they do that?” Under the direction of Leialoha Amina and Nani Lim Yap, a show more than a year in the making proved the halau was still in champion form as it showcased seven different hula kahiko dances, back to back.

Then they performed a series of hula ‘auana, or modern style dances, in blue holoku dresses that were made in Japan and donated to the halau for the Ho‘ike.

“This performance represents us moving forward and really preparing for the future of this halau,” said Namakana Davis-Lim, who will be among the first class to be graduated as na kumu hula in September. Davis-Lim won the Miss Aloha Hula contest in 2006.

By this time the show were running 45 minutes late, but the stadium stayed as packed as ever. Next was a rare treat, from the far eastern tip of the Pacific triangle. Rangi Moana, from the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), took the stage.

“First time in the history, a Rapa Nui group, here in Hawaii, Merrie Monarch,” said leader Marcos Rapu Mena.

Their performances portrayed life on the island, Mena said through an interpreter. They also danced a sad song about the loss of a boy, whose sister cries because he’s not there. Then, he said, the sister prays for his spirit to protect the family.

Several times, the dancers, clad in minimal feathered costumes, went into the crowd and dragged audience members onto the stage. The crowd ate it up.

The final group to take the stage, Nonosina, is a renowned Tahitian group from Anaheim, Calif., that focused its performance on the epic migration from Samoa and Western Polynesia to Tahiti.

The theme was a natural one, given that the Mevina Liufau leads a branch of Nonosina in Japan and his sister Tiani Liufau leads the one in Anaheim, Calif. Some of the members, in fact, had performed in Japan on Saturday, flown home to California and then to Hawaii in the course of a few days.

“We’re all jet-lagged right now,” he said, shortly before the performance began. “But this opportunity comes once in a life.”

Nonosina dedicated its performance to the late O’Brian Eselu, kumu hula of Ke Kai O Kahiki, who died in his sleep on the night of April 2-3. Eselu was the one who invited the group to the Merrie Monarch Festival, said co-leader Mevina Liufau, and he was supposed to be present at the Wednesday Ho‘ike.

“We know that he’s here in spirit.”