In Search Of Hula, Part 2

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​In Search Of Hula, Part 2

...Continued from yesterday:      
       I couldn't believe it. The final performance of the Kilohana Hula Show was exactly one week previous. If we'd come to Honolulu one week earlier we'd have caught the last show (see previous post, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/in-search-of-hula-part-1).
       Tom and I sat at the Kuhio Beach Hula Mound for a few more minutes while I nursed my disappointment and we tossed around what to do with the hour we had been planning to spend watching the Hula Show.

      Not that there was any lack of things to do.
     We headed back down Kalakahua Avenue in the direction of downtown Waikiki, passing what there was to see along the beach and the avenue.

     We decided to pop into the International Market, a nice mall,

...except for the Cat Cafe Moff, which we visited last year and, I'm sad to say, in no way approve of (see post from 5/18/2024, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/a-tale-of-two-cat-cafes).

      After the mall we decided to revisit Duke's Alley (see previous post).

      Then, since we were near the Royal Hawaiian Center, where there is a pretty grove, a mall, a food court and a cultural office, ​

...I got the idea of stopping into the cultural office and asking if they knew of any other hula shows in the area. Even if it wasn't the Kilohana Hula Show, I still longed  to see some hula.
      As it turned out, we learned from the very friendly young guy working in the cultural office that there were, in fact, hula shows on the stage right there in the Royal Hawaiian Grove every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday evening from 5:30pm to 6:30pm. We  were in luck: It was Wednesday. 
​       So Tom and I returned to the Royal Hawaiian Grove that evening about 5:15 pm, by which time the area was already crowded with folks who, like us, had come in search of hula.

      However, we were able to find ourselves a nice sitting spot on a long flat rock.
​      Tom in front of our rock.

      The performers were a troupe called the Pu'uhonua Trio and ​made up of three singer/musicians and three dancers, all of whom, we would learn at the end, were related: mother, daughters, sisters, husbands, wives.

      (At one point one of the performers joked that if one spends enough time on the island one realizes that everyone is related).
         Now, not having seen the Kilohana show, I can't compare the hula we saw at the Royal Hawaiian Grove to the hula that we didn't see on the Hula Mound. But the hula we saw at Royal Hawaiian was wonderful.
         The dancers performed to traditional island songs sung with beautiful Hawaiian harmonies. ​One could not but be carried away by the music and the singing,

...and by the dance,

​...performed with so much beauty,

 ...joy, 

...generosity,

...and with such graceful, flowing movements.

     Here are a couple of clips of the Pu'uhonua Trio dancers and musicians:     ​

     We saw one more hula show at the Royal Hawaiian Grove, a Tuesday night show  the night before we left Honolulu. This was a performance by the ​Kawika Trask Trio, a troupe of three musicians and four young dancers who performed an enchanting and captivating mix of traditional as well as ancient hulas brought over from the South Seas by the earliest seafaring people who migrated to the Hawaiian islands.

      Here are some clips of the Kawika Trask performers:

    At the end of the show the troupe's front man thanked us graciously and profusely for watching show and for visiting Hawaii. 

     He also asked us to consider for our next vacation returning to Hawaii and invited us to come back again and see their show. 
     Lord willing, we will.