By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Kamalei Sataraka plays for Etsuko Watanabe.
Happy hula hands
Hui O Kamalei goes for the laughs
By Catherine Kekoa Enomoto
Star-BulletinKumu hula Kamalei Sataraka takes her comic hula seriously. While the Hawaiian renaissance has focused on hula kahiko, or traditional dance, she is a distinctive proponent of humor in motion.
"Everybody knows that we had kahiko, so I bring out some of the comic hula we had," says Sataraka, who brings 10 of her 600-plus students to this weekend's King Kamehameha Hula Competition. Her dancers compete Saturday in the 'auana (modern) division for kupuna, or elders.
Sataraka is a 5-foot-1 bundle of hearty guffaws and ruffly muumuu in poster-paint colors. She comes out of the hula tradition of na kumu hula Sally Kamalani of Kailua, Emma Bishop and John Pi'ilani Watkins.
But her style is all over comic hula legends like Hilo Hattie, Naughty Abbey of Oahu, Aunty Rachel from the Kodak Hula Show and Myrtle K. Hilo.
Sataraka's halau won a recent Kamehameha hula contest with a performance that transcended tacky. Nine 200-pound-plus dancers shimmied in pink and purple muumuus and tossed ostrich-feather boas.
To Saturday's competition, her Hui O Kamalei brings dancers 49 to 62 years old, all from Japan.
"Hula's hot in Japan. Hot! Yup," Sataraka says. "It has been for the last eight, 10 years, and they just love hula. There's a hundred and one, thousand, million hula dancers now. They love Hawaii."
Competition judges
KAHIKO (traditional)
Hula and chant: Pat Namaka Bacon, Bishop Museum; Edith McKinzie, Honolulu Community College; Kalena Silva, University of Hawaii at Hilo
'AUANA (modern)
She speaks rapidly, like a machine gun, in one long breath.
Etsuko Leialoha Watada, the alaka'i (leader) of Sataraka's nearly 500 students in Japan, added, "There's tons, tons (pronounced tahnz)."
Sataraka's oldest competitor is Etsuko Watanabe, a 62-year-old mother of two from Mie prefecture. She's been practicing three hours daily, seven days a week, for the event.
She and her hula sisters will dance a five-island medley -- "The Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai," "Hele on to Kauai," "Pidgin English Hula" for Oahu, "Lahaina" and "Hilo Hattie Hop." The lighthearted repertoire is Sataraka's signature.
"Have fun while you're doing it, because that's my thing," she says. "Don't get out there and dance -- get out there and DANCE! That's what I tell them: You wanna dance -- or do you wanna DANCE! There is a difference.
"People always say I'm different," she admits. "There's some (judges) you see the glasses fall off their face: 'Oh, what was that, what was that?'
"I love that, 'cause you know what? I'm making an impact, whether it's good or bad. If you're gonna be bad at what you do, do it good!" she laughed. "You can be the best at being bad."
King Kamehameha
Hula Competition
