What Hula Taught Me

The Atlantic

06-06-2025

My late grandmother's 10 acres of wild rainforest land, off a dirt road near Hāna, Maui, were part of a larger land grant given to our family more than 175 years ago by King Kamehameha III. When I learned recently that we might lose that land, I panicked—both about the idea of losing it and about something far less tangible and harder to explain.
Generation after generation, the story of our family's land had followed the story of Hawai'i: Ancient lands gave way to sugar plantations, then to ranchers, then to wealthy foreigners. All that time, my family held on to ours. When it was our turn to confront change—this time in the form of a letter from the county of Maui saying, without explanation, that our property taxes had suddenly gone up by 500 percent—my father, aunties, uncles, siblings, and I were determined to save the land that so many before us had protected. It was not just the promise we had made to Grandma, which she had asked for, but it was also the promise her mother had made to her grandfather, and so on, one generation linked to the next and to the next. This was our family's kuleana, our sacred duty. We knew we must remain stewards of our land, and of a nearby 16th-century heiau, or Native Hawaiian temple, which still stands next to my ancestors' graves.
Our family was figuring out several pathways to resolve the property-tax problem. But as we did so, an unwelcome thought materialized: Even if we saved it, so what? What about the next generation? Although I'm part Native Hawaiian, I grew up in Southern California—not Hawai'i—and had moved myself farther and farther east while pursuing a career in journalism. Hawai'i always felt so familiar and I always promised myself to get 'back' there, where I felt a deep connection. But there was always another job, another story to chase, in the other direction.
Now I felt even farther away, settled with my family in Washington, D.C. I felt urgently that I needed to try something new—something that would connect me to my roots, and something that would teach my children about their heritage, too. What I found, in the suburbs of the nation's capital, of all places, was hula. Hula would not solve our tax problem. But maybe it could help us build some connection to Hawai'i when we couldn't physically be there. That's how I found myself in a community recreation center in Silver Spring, Maryland, with my two youngest children in tow, forming a circle with a group of strangers wearing matching red skirts and T-shirts.
That first afternoon, the kids and I mostly sat along the side of the room and watched as a group of musicians picked up ukuleles and slack-key guitars to play familiar Hawaiian songs.
I loved to see the women's red pāʻū, or skirts, sway with the swish of their hips. The men stepped proudly, with hands on their hips. Step together, step right; step together, step left. I felt like I was a kid again, watching my aunties dance at a family wedding, or my great-uncle performing the 'Maui Waltz' at the community center in Hāna. Part of me wanted to join in at that moment, retracing the movements that my aunties had taught me when we gathered for Christmas and Thanksgiving in California. Only once, at my grandparents' 50th-wedding-anniversary party, did I attempt to dance with my sisters as we performed a very basic version of 'Lahaina Luna.' I look back at that moment now and cringe. I didn't really know what I was doing.
But I longed to learn. As far back as I can remember, the hula has mesmerized me. I couldn't get enough of seeing my aunties and, on rare occasions, my grandma dance. They would be encouraged, mostly at weddings, to take a turn on the dance floor, and I'd fixate on their beautiful hands, the way their fingers gracefully curved and moved, gold and jade bracelets dangling from their wrists. I also loved watching my uncles dance hula. And I loved that there were so many types of hula: traditional, fast-moving hula with no music but the beating of the gourd and chanting of dancers' voices; sweet, slow-moving, graceful hula that told a story about love or the beauty of a woman or a place; and even fun, campier hula, too.
Back at the rec center, a woman with long white hair and a deep voice approached me and encouraged me to join the back row, just to practice. Nervous, I declined. Give it a try, she urged. 'Oh, no, no, no, no. I can't dance. I'm just here to watch this first visit,' I said. Members of the hālau, or hula school, lined up in rows facing the kumu hula, our teacher. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. The women and men began to move in unison. Actually, it doesn't look that hard, I thought. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. 'Do it, Mom!' my kids encouraged me. I smiled.
The beat drew me in. I put the skirt on, over my shorts. I walked over to the group and found a place in line, in the back. The linoleum floor felt like ice under my bare feet. A woman dancing next to me smiled and nodded. I would try to follow what she did with my feet and arms at the same time. I looked back at the kids. Their eyes were eager, as if to say, Way to go, Mom! My 11-year-old son, Silas, gave me a thumbs-up. I turned my attention forward. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. I bent my knees. I stepped to the right, remembering to keep my shoulders steady, not moving, so that my hips would sway. I kept my head level.
One important secret to dancing hula is that you must dance with bent knees to get that hip movement. When you bend your knees halfway, it forces your hips to move from side to side when you step, making it look like you're swinging your hips when you're really stepping. But as I sank into my hips, I could feel them creak.
' Kā holo right!' the kumu called, referring to the basic step-together-step move of hula.
'Kā holo, 'ae,' the group answered him affirmatively.
I smiled and looked over at the kids, who were smiling, too. I thought of how often I had pushed them to do some awkward, uncomfortable thing—such as joining a new baseball or soccer team, or a Brownie troop. Joining a new group of people—of strangers—was hard. I had forgotten what that felt like until this moment. But here I was.
After a few times, bending my knees and swaying my hips, the movement felt more familiar. I remembered my aunties teaching me as a little girl the different steps in hula, how to softly roll my hands. Dancing hula was stirring these memories inside me. As I danced, I thought of Grandma. It all felt so right inside my bones. Yes, I thought, this is it. This is what I've been missing. Suddenly, a switch inside me flipped. I went from being self-conscious to in the zone. The simple act of dancing these steps connected me with something I had been yearning for. I knew at that moment that this hālau and hula would become a much bigger part of my life.
Even before the tax problem surfaced, it dawned on me that keeping the land in the family was not so much about financial means but about connection. It was the cultural responsibility, the stewardship, the kuleana that kept it alive, handed across generations. What did that next passing of the baton look like when it would inevitably get passed to me? Would my children pick it up when they were raised so far away from Hawai'i?
I wondered, at times, as I watched my children grow up in their circle of mostly white friends, whether they would ever identify as Hawaiian. Genetically, they were less Native Hawaiian than I was. Culturally, would that be true, too? Would they feel any connection to the place beyond it being a beautiful vacation spot where we happened to have family living? Confronting these questions was uncomfortable. I had learned, through years of visiting my family in Hawai'i, about the land and our lineage. I was determined that my generation would not be the one that lost the land, or sold it, after 175 years of family history.
But I felt so lost about how to guide them. I thought about how many hours I'd spent as a young parent reading books to tell me so many other things about how to raise my children the 'right' way. What to feed them to keep them healthy. Which media were appropriate or helpful for them to consume—which books to read, which movies to see. What kind of electronic devices were appropriate. I even took classes on how to discipline them effectively. I spent so many hours of my life on everything but how to raise them culturally. I found no books on how to raise my children in a way that passed on their culture.
I wanted them to see things the way I was now seeing them. In Hawaiian culture, I envision myself in a line, where uphill I see and honor all the generations that have come before, and downhill I see all the generations yet to come. My life, my time here, is not about just me. It is about the recognition that there is much that I owe to those who have come before me and to those who will come after me.
The hālau, I learned, was not about just hula. It was also about singing and chanting and learning Hawaiian history. On that first visit, we learned some new Hawaiian songs. Even if I needed a translation to understand their meaning, they were catchy, and I found many of them easy to learn. To my surprise, the kids picked them up easily as well. On the drive home, I smiled at the sound of my children's tiny voices singing in Hawaiian.
And so we began. Every weekend, for four hours on Sunday. It became our special thing that we did together, the kids and I. We began to practice hula together at home and started by learning the basic footwork. The kā holo, the basic step moving to the right and then left, represents the vastness of the Pacific. Hela is the name of the move where you tap your right foot forward, then return, then left foot forward, return, mimicking the forward-and-back motion of the waves on the beach. 'Uwehe is a sharp pop out with both knees, like a raindrop. Maewa is like an anchored canoe shifting with the current; you keep your feet flat on the ground, but bend your knees and sway your hips from side to side.
I loved learning how the hula is broken down into basic steps, each intended so that your body's motion mirrors something observed in nature. I could close my eyes, even in the dead of winter in Washington, D.C., and my body could make the motion of the waves on the sand or the raindrops from the sky. The hula, with every step, transported me to Hawai'i.
It wasn't always easy. Our kumu made it clear when he was unhappy that our group hadn't memorized a chant properly or practiced our hula between classes. 'You should all know this chant by now. There are no excuses,' he would say. Or: 'This is a hula about love. I do not see any love in your faces.'
As a newcomer, I struggled to dedicate four hours on a weekend to attend the class. As a working mother with kids, I did not have a lot of time to spend perfecting my chant pronunciation, and often I was so stressed about doing the dances correctly—with proper foot and arm placement—that I knew I was one of the people not smiling.
Yet this weekly class also became a source of immense joy. It was an escape. At hālau, I enjoyed being a hula student and not having to manage anything. It felt good to be learning something, even if at first I wasn't very skilled at it. The kids and I quickly went from being the new family in the group to regulars. I got to know different people. Most people had moved to the area from Hawai'i. We had researchers who worked at the Smithsonian, workers at different federal agencies, members of the military, teachers, and retirees. For some, their reason for being at hālau was that they'd recently moved to D.C. and were homesick. Others, like our kumu, grew up in Hawai'i but had settled in the D.C. area years ago. And a few others didn't have Native Hawaiian ancestry, but they had fallen in love with the culture. For all of us, hālau was healing in some way.
The origin of the hula is not universally settled. But there's a story in Hawaiian oral tradition about the Native Hawaiian goddess Pele, who rules over the volcanoes of the islands. The story goes that the goddess begged her sisters to dance and sing, but they demurred, saying they did not know how. But the youngest sister, Hi'iaka, surprised everyone by dancing on the sands of the beaches as she improvised, having secretly learned from her friend Hopoe.
The American historian Nathaniel B. Emerson wrote one of the first comprehensive books about the practice of hula in 1909. He observed that the Hawaiian people were 'superstitiously religious' and also 'poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.'
In ancient times, hula was practiced not by all Hawaiians but by a select few, and practitioners had to follow a strict set of rituals. The hula was forever changed with the arrival of foreigners, and in particular the arrival of Christian missionaries, whose influence led to a brief ban of public performances in the 1830s. Hawaiian culture faced another crisis with the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, which led to a decades-long period in which Hawaiians were discouraged from partaking in many traditions or even speaking their language. But a hula revival came in the 1960s—along with a wave of tourists eager to consume Hawaiian culture and also because of activists who began to fight to preserve almost-forgotten customs.
Today, the most famous hula event in the world is the Merrie Monarch Festival, a competition that takes place each year on the Big Island and is often called the 'Olympics of Hula.' When I attended in April, what struck me most of all was how Merrie Monarch showcases hula as both a tribute to the ancient tradition and a nod to its evolution. On the first night, dozens of women and men from across the Hawaiian islands and California chanted into the night as their feet hit the floor to the beat of drums. Their voices rang out into the open-air auditorium in Hawaiian, speaking the same chants that their ancestors had spoken for centuries.
I am not a natural performer. I have a hard time faking a smile. And although I am comfortable being on a stage, I'm not necessarily the gal to ham it up. So I was a little nervous for our hālau 's first big hula performance in Washington, D.C. When I heard that we were going to perform at a public-high-school auditorium that seated 600 people, I thought: Dear God.
It was one thing to be confident in moving my body correctly, to feel and tell a story through hula. It was quite another to do it in front of hundreds of people. Then, just a few weeks before the big day, my kumu called me aside and announced that he wanted to add one more hula to the performance: a special mother-son dance. Would Silas and I like to be part of it? It was an easy hula, he explained. Yes, of course, I told him. Silas and I would wear matching red-and-black Hawaiian-print outfits, as would four other mother-son pairs.
Week by week, I was mentally preparing myself. What had I gotten us into? On one hand, I told myself it was just a high-school auditorium. But on the other, this could be really bad if I botched it. On the day of our performance, the kids and I were all excited and nervous. As we got ready backstage with our hālau, the room was electric. Our kumu gathered the entire hālau onto the stage with the thick curtains drawn. The room was quiet, and he began to chant. The chant was one that we'd said together at the beginning of every gathering of our hālau as a way to enter the space and be seen by our ancestors. As our voices joined together, I felt myself grounded in that generational line again, sharing the stories of those who'd come before and holding my children's hands on either side of me.
Once the performance began, everything went by fast. With each song, our hālau got into a groove. I danced to 'Kipona Aloha' with a group of wahine beginner dancers. Once the music started, somehow my body just relaxed. Next, it was time for me to dance with Silas. We walked onstage together, in mother-son units. We danced to 'E Huli Makou,' a call-and-response modern hula. At the end, the boys all gave their moms a big hug. We could hear the crowd go, 'Awww!' My smile couldn't have been bigger.
I realized in that moment that there was nothing performative about what I was doing onstage. I was where I belonged, learning the stories of my ancestors alongside my children and sharing them with the world. What could be more Hawaiian than that?
After the show was over, my dad stood waiting for me, ready for a hug, with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. 'Wow, you're a natural,' he said. I felt the emotion begin to gather in my throat. 'Your grandma would be so proud, Sara.'
I nodded because I knew he was going to say it before he even said it. I'd felt her presence there with me, as I was dancing barefoot on that stage.
Somehow, I also knew, we'd figure out a way to hold on to the land. It was as if, in middle age, I was finally in my own skin. I'd found my kuleana.