The 46th annual Prince Lot Hula Festival will be held in person for the first time in four years, and is scheduled to take place Saturday at the Frank F. Fasi Civic Grounds.
The free, one-day festival is themed Ola ka Hula i ka Po‘e Hula, meaning “hula lives through hula people.” The theme symbolizes the strength and perseverance of those who have supported the annual event, which was held virtually throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, said the director of the Prince Lot Hula Festival, Pauline Worsham. Worsham is also managing director of the Moanalua Gardens Foundation, the nonprofit that is organizing the event.
“We persevered despite lockdown, despite all the different requirements that we had to meet with masking and social distancing,” Worsham said. “It’s a sign that hula lives on through the pandemic and is alive and well … despite all the hardships that they had to endure.”
The noncompetitive Prince Lot Hula Festival, founded in 1978 by the Moanalua Gardens Foundation, was created in honor of Lota Kapuaiwa, who ruled Hawaii as Kamehameha V. During his reign, Kapuaiwa inspired a cultural revival, including that of hula and chant, according to the Moanalua Gardens Foundation’s website.
This year’s event is set for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and will feature 12 performing hula halau from Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island. There will also be cultural demonstrations of poi pounding, kapa making, lau hala weaving, featherwork and lei making, a performance by the Royal Hawaiian Band, local food vendors and a Hawaiian-inspired craft fair.
The Malia Kau award will also be presented at the event, to kumu hula Pohaikealoha Souza, who has dedicated her life’s work to perpetuating hula and its traditions. Souza’s halau, Halau Hula Kamamolikolehua, has performed at the annual Prince Lot Hula Festival for years, and the award will be presented to her by the Moanalua Gardens Foundation in the event’s opening ceremony, Worsham told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a written statement.
This being the first year that the festival will be in person since the pandemic, a limited budget required organizers to shorten the festival from its usual two days to one, she said. Organizers also had to establish new relationships with vendors and reconnect with old vendors, making planning more challenging than previous years.
This year’s festival will cost several hundred thousand dollars, and is sponsored by numerous organizations, she said. However, she hopes that the upcoming year will bring enough support from the community to allow for the return to a two-day festival in 2024.
She also expressed her excitement for the return to an in-person festival, where participating performers from ages 3 to 73 will share their love of hula with the public.
“It epitomizes all the good in our culture and why we do what we do to preserve our hula traditions, to celebrate our past, to perpetuate our language, our oli, our customs and the Hawaiian culture,” she said. “We provide all of that, plus a spectacular event for the community that’s authentic and very representative of what we’re all about in Hawaii … the aloha spirit.”
Parking for this year’s festival will be free and located at the municipal lot next to the Civic Center Grounds, she said. The festival will also be aired on KHON2 television in a two-hour broadcast from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 19.
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Linsey Dower covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
