Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu

We attended the yearly gala this past weekend at the Palace of Fine Arts. What an incredible show. I have been following this group for 10 years now, saw them at a free show in LA in 2002 and have been a big fan and donor since then. If you love Hawaii, you will love this show. Patrick is quite the showman too, very charming and engaging. I love the traditional hula blended with modern music and themes. Funny too! Love them and will see them again whenever I can.

OMG, what a great show at the Palace! The dancers were incredible! The Obama Birth Certificate Dance was totally fun. There was such joy and inspiration… Cheers to King Kalakaua and his love of hula!

It’s that time again ~ the window to join beginning hula class is about to open, starting April 5^th, 2012. After May 3^rd, 2012, enrollment will close for another two years (unless you’ve learned hula previously).
If you’ve ever wanted to take hula classes, I highly recommend checking it out. Even though I had to stop going due to my schedule, after three years of being with the halau (hula school), I think fondly of my time there. I miss my ohana.
Our Kumu Patrick Makuakane used to say, ‘leave your worries at the door’ and so most of us did for the duration of the class. Hearing the rhythm of the island beats and dancing with my fellow brothers and sisters was a true joy. As I’d head home from class, I’d feel calm and happy.
In addition to the dance, our Kumu taught us about Hawaiian culture and also would get us to laugh often. Here are details for the class:

Patrick Makuakane and Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu present The Hula Show at the Palace of Fine Arts each Fall. This is the show to see! Hula, the expressive, graceful dance of the Pacific Islands has never looked so fantastic. The live music and vocal offerings were perfect with the splendid new interpretations and traditional favorites, interspersed with enough humor to make it a great evening with friends and family. If you missed this show this time around, save the date for next year!

I bought tickets for the Hula for Families show at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater. I figure, for $ 10, it was something I could do cheap with the kids. And I’ve always liked live dance and songs performanced on stage.
Entering the theater, they had activities laid out for the kids — paper bag paintings and coloring pictures. A music group was on stage playing ukuleles and singing hawaiian songs.
I made sure we get close to the stage as possible and we did. We were able to get seats 3 rows from the front. The show started with all the performers on stage, with a beautiful projection of the underwater. Very nice!
Highlights of the show for me:
1. The debut hula performance by the students. These were girls ages 6 – 12 yrs old I think. They did an awesome job :) I’m researching now on how I can get my daughter to take classes with them.
2. They made us all stand and teach us a hula dance step and later on danced with the emcee as he sang and danced the steps on stage. Awesome! This was very fun. My kids were also dancing along.
3. A great hula rendition of «The first time ever I saw your face».
4. Disco bar and café program — Who says hula is boring? And can not cross over to pop music? Well, they were grooving to the beats of I Will Survive and It’s Raining Men.
5. The drag man in 4 inch heels, silver dress and wig. This was an awesome performance. Yes, we are still talking of hula dance lol.
The show was really entertaining. I’m very happy that they had thought of catering to the families with small kids.
I had always thought of learning how to hula and learn how to play the ukulele. Watching them dance, sing and those kids, gave me more appreciation for this type of shows.
Great job! Clap! Clap! Clap!

AMAZING!!!
That’s all you need to know about this halau…

Last night I saw the Hula Show 2008 by Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu. I love this troupe! The kumu/​teacher/​creative director/​choreographer/​inspiration is Patrick Makuakane.
I realize that when most people think of hula, they imagine pretty shows at tourist-​y luaus in Hawaiian resorts. Or you might think of the kitschy dance popularized in 60s surf movies, which was itself a variation on the strange 1940s GI send-​up of the original dance.
This is not your (grand)father’s hula.
Kumu Patrick reaches back in time with one hand, preserving ancient traditions as he learned them from his Kumu, who in turn learned them from her Kumu. He trains his dancers to respect the dance, the culture and the gods they honor. The dancers spend years learning the form before they are even considered for the performance troupe, and the training really shows.
On the other hand, Kumu is a very modern gay man living in San Francisco who listens to many styles of music and has a sense of flair. He brings all his creative energy and love of what he sees around him here in the Bay Area to the dance, inventing new hulas which make you hear things in the music you didn’t even know were there. Additionally, these annual shows take place at the Palace of Fine Arts, where he can immerse the audience visually in the stories behind every dance through the creative use of lighting, projections and inventive staging.
Hula Show 2008 included several traditional hulas done to chanting and some of the modern style hula that we’ve come to expect when going to see a hula show. The group’s execution distinguishes these dances, but the content is not what surprises audiences and brings them back every year. What makes them know they’re at a Na Lei Hulu show are numbers like a club music medley which awed the audience with the hip-​control skills of the women, a cowboy hula which paid a sexy and flirty tribute to the Hawaiian caballeros who took top prize in a 1930s roping contest in Montana, and a series of hulas celebrating «Hawaii’s Songbird,» Lena Machado. My personal favorite, though, was the Krishna Hula, originally created a few years ago by Kumu Patrick, who ends his telling of the story behind it with (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) «I love San Francisco. Where else can you have two different groups doing their traditional dances in tribute to their gods, celebrating with wild abandon and coming together — and no one gets hurt?»
The show continues for one more weekend and I think there are a few tickets left. If you’re in the Bay Area, go check it out.

We saw the show this weekend at the Palace of Fine Arts and it was amazing! The hula dances, costumes and decorations were beautifully done and hearing stories about O’ahu from Patrick Makuakane really brought the show to life. I appreciated learning about the island’s history too. The «Time after Time» number just about brought me to tears! It was so beautiful! Mahalo Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu for a wonderful show. You guys are awesome! We will definately be back next year. Alohaa!

Fabulous (adj) see also «amazing, incredible, extravagant, outrageous, stupendous»
Yes, all of these adjectives describe the men and women who make up Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu. Don’t try pronouncing the name of this hula troupe. It’s nearly impossible. What you should try and do is see their show which is every October at the Palace of Fine Arts. Led by Patrick Makuakane, Director/​Kumu Hula, you get to see hula that most residents in Hawai’i don’t get to see. Not only is Patrick incredibly talented, he’s some serious eye candy himself and funny.
I’ve seen his halau’s performances for four years. Every year is a combination of something funny as well as moving. For tickets costing $ 30 – 35, live entertainment doesn’t come any more inexpensive and at such great quality.

I fell down the stairs last night at the Palace of Fine Arts. Nothing major, but definite stumbl-​age.
Fortunately, the dancers of Né Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu share none of my clutziness. I’m lucky enough to have a friend in the company, and a group of us went last night to support her and take in their annual performance. Oh my. Unbelievable! So powerful, graceful, moving, educational, funny, heart-​breaking. I’m *this* close to booking a one-​way ticket to Hawaii.
Run, don’t walk to buy your tickets for the final two performances. For $ 30, you’ll leave thinking you would have spent $ 1,224,555 to be a part of it. If you miss this go-​around, they perform every October.

Just minutes away from running out of the house to my dance class, it dawned on me that I should take a few minutes to tell the Unilocalers of the land how great Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu is.
First off, it’s a local non-​profit dance company that operates out of a middle school assembly room on Potrero Hill. I had the good sense of enrolling in this halau over two years ago… and I can’t even begin to explain how much this experience has effected my life.
Kumu hula, Patrick Makuakane is Fabulous with a capital F — I leave every class feeling inspired and about 20x saner than I was when I arrived. His passion and enthusiasm are contagious — if you have ever seen his performing group’s shows at the Palace of Fine Arts, you’d understand. His pieces are moving, the choreography stunning, and his presence undeniably powerful.
If you have the time and the energy, everyone, men, you too, should look into his beginning classes that are offerred once every two years. In the meantime, go see the show that is coming up in October, you won’t be sorry!!!