Tickets for this year’s Merrie Monarch Festival Ho‘ike will go on sale at 9 a.m. Sunday at the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium box office in Hilo.
Tickets for the popular event are just $5 and the box office will remain open until the tickets are sold out, according to Merrie Monarch Festival President Luana Kawelu.
“It’s going to be an all-Hawaii Ho‘ike,” Kawelu said of the event, which will start at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 12 at Edith Kanaka‘ole Multi-Purpose Stadium in Hilo.
“We’re going to honor Johnny Lum Ho. We’ll also have Robert Cazimero and the Kanaka‘ oles,” she said. “They’re the ones who have been there since the beginning, and we’ll be honoring them on our 60th anniversary.
Lum Ho had committed to bringing his wahine dancers and a Miss Aloha Hula candidate for this year’s competition — known as the “Super Bowl of Hula” — for the festival’s 60th anniversary.
The revered kumu hula — who was considered a creative genius as a teacher, choreographer, composer, singer and chanter — died April 3, 2022, a couple of weeks prior to the 59th Merrie Monarch. It was the end of an era as Lum Ho was the last living kumu from the festival’s first hula competition in 1971.
Six of Lum Ho’s wahine dancers won Miss Aloha Hula, hula’s most prestigious individual title. No other kumu hula had as many ‘olapa so honored.
At least one Lum Ho dancer who became Miss Aloha Hula, Ka‘ula Kamahele, will be among the dancers. She won the coveted title in 1980 when Lum Ho’s Hilo halau — later known as Halau O Ka Ua Kani Lehua — was still operating under its original name, Johnny Lum Ho Hula Studio.
Another of the dancers will be Lum Ho student Robert Ke’anokealakahikikapoleikamaka’opua Ka’upu IV, a kumu hula who has, himself, with partner kumu hula Lono Padilla, trained three Miss Aloha Hula winners in recent years.
“We have over 100 to 150 of Johnny’s dancers going to come back,” said Kawelu. According to Kawelu, the tribute was organized by Bert Naihe, who was a dancer, alaka‘i and singer-guitarist with Lum Ho’s halau. For years, Naihe has also been part of the audio crew providing sound for the live musicians playing stage-side at Merrie Monarch.
Cazimero has been an A-list Hawaiian music star for five decades as well as a kumu hula. His Halau Na Kamalei O Lililehua won Merrie Monarch overall and kane overall titles in 2015 and performed in the 2018 Ho‘ike, as well as the festival’s golden anniversary Ho‘ike in 2013.
And in a tradition dating back to 1997, Hilo’s Halau O Kekuhi, under the direction of kumu hula and Merrie Monarch judge Nalani Kanaka‘ole Zane, will kick off the evening’s performances. The halau, celebrated for its mastery of the ‘aiha‘a style of hula and oli (chant), specializes in what the Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation website describes as a “low-postured, vigorous, bombastic style of hula that springs from the eruptive volcano persona Pele and Hi‘iaka, characteristic of Hawaii Island’s creative forces.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.