Aloha, Burbank : A Hula School Helps Dancers, Teacher Keep in Touch With Hawaiian Culture

Competition was stiff at the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival held in Hilo on the island of Hawaii in April. Only groups with a solid reputation were invited to the festival, nicknamed the “Super Bowl of Hula,” which many aficionados consider the most important of all hula competitions.

When it was all over, the first-place winner in “modern” hula for women was the entry from Burbank.

Burbank?

“People are surprised sometimes that we are here,” said Edward Kunewa Mook, the kumu, or head teacher, at the Hula Halauo Kamuela studio in Burbank. “But Hawaiian people are everywhere in the L.A. area and they want to keep touch with their culture.”

His troupe will be showing off its winning form at the Salute to Recreation festival in Northridge Park at 1 p.m. Sunday. Also appearing will be his girls group, ages 6 to 11, which won a first prize at the Liliuokalani Keiki Hula Festival last August in Honolulu.

The Burbank studio, located in an unmarked storefront that was formerly a Spanish-language record shop, looks just like any dance studio. One wall is mirrored, the floor is wood parquet and at class times there are plenty of bags and Evian bottles in the changing room.

And Mook, who looks sternly out on the 13 students in his main group as they practice, seems like any other tough dance teacher. “You have feet, girls, use them!” he calls out as they rehearse a Tahitian dance. “I want you to start working as a team!”

But the students don’t come to Mook just to learn dance, they look upon hula as a way of life.

“It seems like every time I want to go out and do something, it’s time for hula class,” said Kaanohiokala Fuchigami, 18, whose friends call her Jenifer. She was born in Hawaii, but her family came to Los Angeles as a youngster. “We missed the islands so much, the people, the approach to life. This was a way of getting back into that,” she said while on a break during the class.

Normally, the students come to class twice a week, but when getting ready for a competition they meet every day. They study not only hula dance, which has its roots in ancient Hawaiian mythology, but also traditional Hawaiian music and the crafts involved in making traditional costumes (during rehearsals, they wear long, black practice skirts that have an island coral print design). Soon, they hope to have a teacher to begin Hawaiian language classes.

“Maybe I don’t do a lot of the things my other friends in school do, but this makes you kind of special, different,” said Moani Kahau, 15, the youngest member of the women’s troupe. She started lessons three years ago because her father wanted her to be in closer touch with her heritage.

“So now I do things with my hula sisters.”

Before he could teach, Mook had to get in touch with his own roots. “I started under the tutelage of my uncle when I was 3,” said Mook, who was born in Hawaii. He didn’t want to give his age.

“I don’t want my students to know how old I am,” he said with a laugh.

Mook became a hula teacher when he was a teen-ager, but he completely left the dance behind when he came to Los Angeles at age 18 to better his chances of getting a good job.

He got his degree in accounting from Cal State Los Angeles and found out after working in that field for only nine months that he hated it. He went to beauty school, was licensed as a cosmetologist and, with a partner, eventually opened The Hairdo beauty salon in Burbank.

His uncle, who Mook says was a well-known hula teacher in Hawaii, died in 1980 and Mook’s sister took over his halauo, or school. “I started going back there to help out, to sing for her classes,” Mook said. “I didn’t realize it, but I was readying myself for getting back into the hula. One day, I told my sister I’d like to start teaching again.

“She said, ‘OK, but first you have to go back to school again.’ ”

Mook traveled back and forth to Hawaii to study with his sister, and then in 1987 he took on his first student in Los Angeles. By the end of that year he had the storefront and a troupe. Most of his students, he said, come to him by word of mouth in the Hawaiian community.

He currently teaches five groups: women, men, girls, boys and a class of older women Mook calls his “gracious ladies.”

Classes include both modern and ancient hula (the ancient style is less abstract with movements miming scenes from everyday life) and Tahitian dancing.

“We do the Tahitian because people want some variety when we perform,” Mook said.

The groups perform at festivals and for private parties--they were hired for the post-wedding party for the son of Jerry Buss at the Forum, for example. Proceeds from these appearances go toward trips to competitions. Fund raising is also done by parents of students. At Northridge Park they will have a food stand.

Mook said he barely breaks even on the operation of the studio. Student tuition, which is about $20 a month, totals about $900 a month but $600 of that goes toward rent, he said. And the rest is eaten up by supplies and other expenses.

He hopes one day to turn his attention totally toward teaching, but until then Mook has to balance two occupations. A call to him at The Hairdo during working hours brought this question from the receptionist: “Is this about hair or the hula?”

“Someday maybe I will go back to Hawaii and do only hula teaching,” he said. “But for now, I feel like my students need me here. I need them, too.”

The Salute to Recreation festival, sponsored by the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, runs from 5 to 10 tonight and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Northridge Park, 10058 Reseda Blvd., Northridge. Numerous local groups will perform. Information: (818) 349-0535.