Our Hoike!

Saturday, May 19th was my halau Kehulili O Kailani's annual hoike.  Everything turned out absolutely wonderfully!  The food, weather, music & dancing was awesome!  I'm so thankful for all the family and friends who came out to watch and support our halau!  Mahalo!  Oh, and be sure to scroll all the way through to watch some videos of our dancing!

My two keiki's and I ready for the show to begin!  

 Our first number, E Lili'u e, which was a very fast, modern auana style hula.  

 This was my niece, Leia's first hoike.  She's doing a seated hula called Kilauea.  She did such a great job!  

 Here we are performing a medley with the uli uli, ipu and puili sticks.  :)  

Next we used kala'au sticks and did a new hula called Hopoe.

This was a fun one - Maeva - which means "welcome" in Tahitian.  (On a side note, I remember when Andrew and I went to Tahiti back in 2006, and I remember stepping off the cruise ship onto one of the islands and hearing some of the locals singing and dancing to this same song!  So fun!)  

Poi Balls!  Need I say more?  ;)  

Leia performing her keiki tahitian - very cute! 

This was my favorite hula of the day... Lei Halia, by Keali'i Reichel, which means lei of fond recollection.  Keali'i Reichel is my absolute favorite Hawaiian artist.  I was so blessed to see him perform live last Christmas!  :)  

And this was my favorite costume that we made... yes, we made this costume (and just about all of our costumes) by hand!  Tons of work, lots of time & effort, but it was fun, and well worth it in the end!  

You can see both this Tahitian routine, called Ote'a Tai, and the above hula, Lei Halia, in the following videos!  Enjoy!

  

Mahalo again!  And mahalo nui loa to our teachers Leimomi & Luana for all their hard work in making another hoike a wonderful success!