Hula

The Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo Is One of the Last Legit Places to See the Real Hawaii, Ancient and Modern, on Full Display.

- Hanya Yanagihara

THE LIGHTS DIM, and the arena goes quiet. Though it’s never truly quiet—Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium is vault-ceilinged and cavernous, and coughs echo through the space—you can sense the audience stilling itself; you can hear the bleachers creak as people lean forward.

Then the first of the men walk onto the stage, and the crowd—some 5,000 people—sigh their appreciation and shout their approval. Flashbulbs blink throughout the stadium like fireflies. There are 20 men, and at first, they appear to be identical: their chests and legs and armpits freshly waxed, their hair slicked back with pomade, their foreheads and ankles and wrists and necks circled with bushy fern leis. They are naked but for a malo, a poufy fold of stiff cotton, which covers the crotch and resembles an origami rose. They stand, arms stretched before them, thumbs aligned, or with fists on their hips, and wait for the sound of their teacher’s hand slapping against his ipu, a large dried gourd that provides the percussive beat for all hula chants. Many hulas that are danced to chants begin with a call-and-response, and the teacher sings out a first line in Hawaiian—Are you ready?—and his troupe shouts out their affirmation: Yes, we’re ready. And then the dance begins.