Kalua pig for the taste buds, ukulele for the ears, and Tahitian, auana and kahiko dances for the eyes.
Tomorrow in the Ackerman Grand Ballroom, Hui O ‘Imiloa Hawai’i Club at UCLA will put on its 28th annual luau complete with traditional Hawaiian food, dance and music.
In custom luau fashion, the day was created as a way for UCLA students to experience Hawaiian culture without having to leave Los Angeles. The event will start out with a feast comprised of Hawaiian staples such as the kalua pig, lomi lomi salmon and haupia (a coconut milk-based Hawaiian dessert). The performance component of the event will follow the meal, which, as co-president of the club and fourth-year biology student Brittany Jang said, is not just comprised of girls in coconut bras and pineapples, despite common misconceptions.
“There’s so much more to the dances and to the culture itself than the very mainstream touristy luau you see if you go to a hotel in Hawaii,” Jang said.
The club members will perform a mix of traditional and contemporary Hawaiian dance pieces choreographed by both the students and professional hula instructors who regularly come in to teach club members more authentic Hawaiian dances, some of which are being performed at the luau.
“We have a spread of Tahitian dancing,” Jang said. “We have men and women dances in kahiko, which are your slower, more traditional, ancient dances, and we also have auana, which are your contemporary, very pretty, modern dances.”
This year, for the first time after becoming the club’s “kumu” (dance teacher), Randy Chang, who owns his own “halau” (hula dance school) and has been teaching the club’s members for four years, decided to incorporate chanting into kahiko dances in an attempt to make the dances more authentic.
“It’s kind of like you’re speaking a different language because you don’t hear it all the time,” said Brandi Woo, the club’s internal vice president and third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student. “The chants also help tell (a) story because the dances talk about different parts of the island and the beauty and nature of it. So while you’re showcasing that through your movement and your dancing, you can also speak it.”
For Woo, who was born and raised in Hawaii, the storytelling component of many types of Hawaiian dancing was a big appeal for her as she said it allowed her to stay connected with the islands she left behind.
“I still have family back on the island, and to come here and embrace the culture and learn more about it through the luau and the club is great,” Woo said. “It’s not just about the physical dancing like the fast hips in Tahitian. There’s thought and a story being told with each dance, and I think that’s something that … I really like about the culture.”
Third-year global studies student and the club’s external vice president Caley Moffatt explained that the stories being told through the kahiko dances, which are comprised of stronger, more simplistic movements, vastly differ from those told through the auana dances which incorporate more fluid, graceful gestures.
“In the kahiko dance, the chant is in honor of Queen Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii,” Moffat said. “Our auana this year is a love story about a woman who the singer loves and she left him. There’s a lot of symbolism and imagery in the piece; we talk about a flower which represents the woman.”
Moffat added that to close the evening, the members of the group will sing “Hawaii Aloha,” a unifying song that’s an important part of Hawaiian culture.
“It’s the perfect way to end (the day) because we all hold hands and we sing,” Moffat said. “People who grew up in Hawaii or who know Hawaiian culture, know the words to the song, it’s kind of like an unofficial anthem that brings everyone together.”