Prince Lot Hula Festival

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In the beautiful Hawaiian islands, they have a dance that tells the story. It is the popular hula dance that you can see in many movies that feature Hawaii. The hula combines flowing motions with the body and the hands that are all set to music accompanied by special chants. When interest in the hula started fading Prince Lot Kapu’aiwa knew just what to do. He was strongly in favor of promoting and preserving Hawaiian culture. He began to hold hula performances at his cottage in Moanalua. Later on, the prince became Kamehameha V, King of Hawaii from 1863 to 1872. His efforts to keep the hula dance alive and to preserve Hawaiian culture were rewarded in 1978 when the Prince Lot Hula Festival was established. Since then every year hula schools come to the festival and perform at the Moanalua Gardens in Honolulu. There are other Hawaiian activities during the festival such as the art of lei-making. The lei is a flower necklace. This year the festival was held at the historic Iolani Palace on July 20th. Writing about Hawaii has reminded me of Don Ho and I have included one of his most popular songs “Tiny Bubbles”.