Poetry in Motion

If hula dancing were a sport, Keali’i Ceballos would be Phil Jackson. For six years running, Ceballos’ West L.A.-based hula school, Halau Keali’i O Nalani, has walked away with the top prize at E Hula Mau, an annual competition for mainland halaus (hula schools). In June, his dancers placed in five of eight categories at the King Kamehameha hula competition on Oahu, the best showing ever for a mainland halau. And for eight years, the halau has participated in what Ceballos calls the “Olympics of Hula,” the invitation-only Merrie Monarch Festival held annually in Hilo, Hawaii.

“We’re changing the opinion of lots of people back home,” he says. When Ceballos calls Hawaii home, you’d assume he grew up there, with his liberal use of Hawaiian phrases and exotic features (he’s Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Irish and Native American). But Ceballos is an Angeleno born and bred who discovered hula as a toddler by watching his mother dance.

Ceballos’ late mother, Cecilia “Cissylani” Ceballos, a former beauty queen and hula dancer, had an impressive following. In the early 1940s, Cissylani and her future husband, a musician, were among 36 Hawaiian entertainers chosen to tour the mainland and “spread the aloha.” When the tour ended, Cissylani headlined at the Seven Seas, a Hawaiian-themed lounge and restaurant in Hollywood, where she taught celebrities to sway their hips. “I wanted to be there all the time,” says her son. “I just couldn’t get enough.”

That hunger never subsided. Ceballos learned hula at home as a child and began formal training when his mother started a school in Gardena. In his late teens, he became her teaching assistant and spent summers in Hawaii learning the craft from some of the best dancers there.

When Ceballos opened his own hula school in West L.A. in 1991, he was teaching homesick Hawaiian students attending local colleges. Today, Ceballos, 42, has more than 200 students, most with no roots in Hawaii. “Students are in search of what hula is, why hula dancers are so happy, why they’re so intense when they’re chanting.”

In the words of King Kalakaua, the eponymous “Merrie Monarch” of the great hula festival: “Hula is the language of the heart and therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.” Hula is a highly emotional, traditional dance using movement and gesture to tell stories about Hawaiian history, culture and thought. With its accompanying mele, or poetic chant, a hula dance may retell the birth of the islands, offer prayers to Hawaiian deities, pay tribute to nature or tell love stories.

Ceballos takes students to Hawaii to witness firsthand the natural beauty they describe through their dancing. He also prefers choreographing to songs written in Hawaiian, so that students learn to convey story through movement rather than rely on the audience’s understanding of lyrics.

Despite his success, Ceballos is after more than trophies. “I want to honor the Hawaiian culture here on the mainland.”