““The value of hula is always that it’s transcendent…The dancer takes on another spirit and it is not what you do with your body but it is what you know and what you feel inside that comes out. When the dancer has that kind of connection with her hula, then the audience will also feel it and see it…””
With deep gratitude and aloha for Kumu Loea Nālani Kanaka'ole, who left us in February 2026. May her mana continue to move through the hula.
Bringing hula to life is a miraculous thing. It is an act of creation — life giving, life serving. And like any deep relationship, it is a disciplined process. It demands your full attention. It is getting to know hula intimately, like a dear friend.
I remember the early years of dancing with my hula sisters in our halau in Waimea on the Big Island. At 3,000 feet elevation, Waimea had cool humid evenings often filled with mist and sometimes dripping fog. Nature’s greenery surrounded and nurtured us.
The camaraderie among my hula sisters was strong and supportive. We had an exacting hula master who was young and energetic. We spent three hours every week practicing our hula over and over again. We drilled for hours traveling back and forth across the floor. We chanted from our diaphragms. We danced. Sweat beaded everywhere. It was a deep focused somatic memorization meditation.
This is how we learned basic hula choreography. And Kumu did not want us to stop there.
He wanted us to go deeper into each dance by knowing the story behind the hula and understanding the poetry. For me this meant translating Hawaiian words and many times puzzling over its kaona (hidden message) and how it resonated in my life. That knowledge was essential to bring emotions to the story through the dance.
It meant spending lots of time with each hula which included listening to the song or chant many times. I used the long commute to Hilo and back - a good 75 minutes each way in the car – to do just this.
The Hamakua route to Hilo is a gorgeous drive starting with the rolling Parker Ranch pastures sloping down from Mauna Kea, then the cliffs of Hamakua and the three big gulches filled with kukui trees. And then the warmth of Hilo. It was a perfect time to listen to chants and memorize.
In hula, memorization happens in two places: brain and body. This is how the kaona – hidden or not - really becomes a part of me. It’s how I get intimate with it and how it gets intimate with me. This is what brings life to hula and to me.
Through the hula, I re-member the past and bring history alive into the present moment. This is my invitation to you — to get intimate with your hula and let it get intimate with you.
Malama pono (take care of body, mind and heart),
June Kaililani Tanoue
Kumu Hula, Roshi
P.S. Recent talks at our Zen Life & Meditation Center:
June Tanoue, "Bodhisattva Vow in Times of Stress" https://youtu.be/PJcwwgXEdOQ
Patrick O'Shea "8 Worldly Concerns" https://youtu.be/lQllnVfdOYs
Dorotea Mendoza ""Matters of the Heart and the Practice of Writing: Meeting Ourselves on the Page" https://youtu.be/KYgptIOhYw4
Robert Althouse "Architecture of Freedom: Finding Clarity in Dark Times" https://youtu.be/MaG3XfOd4Us