Hiloverse, the dance team from the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s Performing Arts Department, has been selected to appear at the 2025 American College Dance Association’s national festival in Washington, D.C., in May.
The 16-student dance team was one of three teams that qualified for the national festival out of 40 teams that danced at the ACDA High-Desert Regional Conference in Laramie, Wyoming, in late March. Three teams are chosen from each of the 11 regional conferences throughout the year, where approximately 440 dances were performed in total, UH Hilo dance instructor and choreographer for Hiloverse Kea Kapahua said.
This is the first time a UH Hilo dance team has made it to the ACDA national festival that is held every two years, and the March performance in Wyoming was the first time the university had performed at any regional conference, she said.
“I shared with my students when we were preparing to participate at the conference in Wyoming that the goal isn’t to compete: Our main objective is to share our aloha and Hawaiian culture from our island home,” Kapahua said.
Kapahua choreographed the hula “Hali‘a Aloha No Kaimu” to honor the history of the fishing village of Kaimu, which was covered by lava in 1990. The teacher said she interviewed her 91-year-old aunty, Cecilia Kapali Torres-Kaiewe, about growing up in the Kaimu and Kalapana areas to inspire the dance.
Kapahua praised her collaborators, including lighting manager Mike Dombroski, costume designer Lee Barnette-Dombroski, and videographer David Bennett, who captured the visual and audio representations of the coastline near Kalapana.
Incorporating audio recordings of Torres-Kaiewe’s interview and ocean sounds from that stretch of coastline into the performance was important to Kapahua, who said her “intent was to capture the feeling of a moment in time … in a special place.”
Hiloverse dance member Kai Melendez said the team’s members each selected their own ‘ili‘ili stones to use as percussive instruments while singing “Mokuhulu” about the coastline being honored in the 12-minute performance, which incorporates multiple classic mele.
She said the performance in Wyoming that earned them a spot at the national festival was emotional and received a standing ovation.
“We felt so connected to the piece by the end of it,” said Melendez. “The judges were shedding tears, the audience was shedding tears. Some people told us they’d never seen ocean, let alone hula or Hawaii. It felt really special.”
Melendez said Hiloverse was the only dance team to perform hula at the Wyoming conference, and perhaps the only hula team in the entire ACDA competition season. She commended Kapahua, saying the teacher “heralded this entire process.”
“This journey has fostered tremendous growth in my physical abilities, mental resilience and spiritual connection to dance,” said fellow Hiloverse dancer Milia Dela Cruz.
“The retelling and sharing of such a beautiful place, known to many as the Lost Hawaiian Village, was a place where my ancestors lived together, elbow-to-elbow with their neighbors, eating out of the same poi bowl,” said Hiloverse dancer Loreal Gonzales. “Everyone was family there, and they all strived to hold on to simplistic ways of life, a legacy I am proud, honored and humbled to represent in a world that has moved on to modernized ways of life.”
Email Kyveli Diener at kdiener@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
