The 2009 Honolulu Okinawan Festival

Herein lies a tale. This lady was a hula dancer from Okinawa, and she had an extraordinary amount of aloha, enough to be a Kumu, in fact. Technically, she wasn’t the best, and that was hardly to be expected, but in any case she really had the spirit. Later that week, one of the Kumu Hula asked her to dance with her group on the hula pa’a with his Halau at Kuhio Beach, and she danced much better in the midst of a bona fide Halau, and she probably was picking a lot of it up by induction on the spot. She also had an extraordinary amount of aloha for everyone in the area. I got some really good shots of that which I will publish down the line.

The hula dancers make it look easy, but when you dance hula, you have to crouch down on your knees a lot. That’s an essential part of how it flows, and it’s just very unnatural body language for both Westerners and East Asians, because it feels like you’re crawling around. It’s also exhausting if you’re not used to it. It’s the kind of basic that’s really better to pick up at a young age. Then it’s natural and automatic. Some people can learn it later, and I think that this wonderful lady is probably one of them, but she’ll never get it in the midst of guys looking at her like these are in this photo, and they did it to her the whole time she performed at the Okinawan Festival.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at this event, but there are a few more photos in my Okinawan Festival – 5 Sep 09 Album

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Halau Hula O Ke Kia’i

One of my favorite dancers of all time. She’s improved tremendously since last year. I have to find out her name so that I can attribute all the great images that I have of her. There are other dancers in this halau, but somehow when I try to photograph them, the images are junk. This individual is usually doing something beautiful when I click the shutter.

Kumu Hula Kapiolani Ka’u is using Meher Baba’s sign for God. This is a very difficult individual to photograph. She often creates light effects that destroy the image. This is the first time that I succeeded in getting a number of decent images of her. In general, this Halau has more mana (spiritual power) than the others I’ve seen.

For more images from the last month or so, see my Halau O Ke Kia’i , Aug-Sep 09 Album.

For some other great images of this group, see my general Halau O Ke Kia’i Album, and it’s other 20 Apr 08 Sub-album

Remember this? It was another world completely only 16 months ago. If I tried to write all that kind of stuff about my images anymore, I’d be dead. And this lady got SO crazy at the end of her reign as Numbah One Gurl in this Halau.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Halau Hula Kalipo

Halau Hula Kalipo dances at Kuhio Beach on Tuesdays. There are now 35 highly selected and edited images in my Halau Hula Kalipo Album, 18 from last night, and 17 more from Tues. 8 Sep. This Halau is a lot of fun, and there are many talented entertainers in it.

Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um! Aloha nui loa mega bong-bong poina’ole! Cellophane skirts are FUN! Inside academia, this is what we call da kine “Polynesian Radiation,” ’cause dis is how da Polynesians wen take ovah da biggest ocean on earth. Forget that Hollywood invented cellophane skirts in the process of trying to ape some kine “grass skirt” from Tahiti. It took Hawaiians to figure out how to use them.

Oh, and hey, I almost forgot to mention. There was no wind at Kuhio Beach that night. That’s HER ENERGY. She didn’t need any help from the wind.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Alohilani who dances with Pua Melia

I originally misidentified the image on the left as Melia. It turned out to be Alohilani, who dances with the Pua Melia group. For a few more images of this fine dancer, see my Pua Melia Album

Sorry about that, ladies.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Some of the best stuff stashed on my photo-site

For those who have been searching this site for hula pictures, they can be found from here: My He Hawai’i Au Album. There’s a right sidebar on this page with links to subfolders in it. Those links beginning with “Halau” (meaning hula school) are where you will find those pictures. Oh,and hey, don’t forgetMelia. That was a certain stage of my career on the Island of O’ahu, and I miss it.

Oh, and hey again, don’t forget Piilani.

IMO, this is the best photo I have ever taken, bar none. This was virtually a spiritual empowerment from one of the reigning masters of Hawaiian hula, to a young unknown dancer who is probably destined to follow in her footsteps. Only in Hawai’i-nei!

I have what is, no doubt and by any criterion, accumulated the best photo collection about Guan Yin Pusa that can be found anywhere on the English-language web: My Kuan Yin Pusa Album. Most of these images were collected from the Chinese-language web. I have signed the minority that I originated, or doctored. The 2nd page of my Kuan Yin Pusa Album contains something else that people have been searching this site for:

The Dark Side of the Bodhisattva – click image to enlarge

When the Lotus Sutra assures us that the Bodhisattva will do ANYTHING to save us, it is the truth. I assure you that the entirety of Central Asian magic, in full regalia, which should not be messed with by the insincere at all, has been attributed, one way or another, to dear Guan Yin. The nuns at Kuan Yin Temple in Honolulu routinely use the power of the lunar nodes themselves, which is something unimaginable that I have never even heard of before. Chinese pentology, of which the first basic is depicted here, is something that should be mastered by anyone who has either East Asian blood or East Asian karma. It allows you to break up a demonic etheric vortex, just for starters, and it allows you to to interpret the traditional cultural environment in the Chinese cultural sphere of influence.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

More Hula at Kapiolani Park

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See my Halau ka La Onohi Album for a few more shots of the Lopez sisters’ new Kalihi halau, which is just three years old, and just recieved their first invitation to the Merrie Monarch Festival next year. The Kumu of this Halau teach Hawaiian Studies at UH Manoa.

The goddess energy was so thick on this day (Sun 22 Jul – see my Pi’ilani Album as well) that I dragged out my Ephemerides to see what the planet Venus was up to. It was with the Sun in sidereal Gemini, and in mutual reception with Mercury in Taurus. Scorchin’! It doesn’t get better for the dance than that, and this will be true until 7 July. The Royal Hawaiian Band’s hula program runs through June, and there is one more Sunday in June, the 29th, which will no doubt be choke little scorchers as well. I wouldn’t miss it.

2:00 o’clock, Sun 29 Jun 08, Kapiolani Park Bandstand. Be there, or be, um, WRONG!

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

“Aloha Oe” by Pi’ilani

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See more superb shots of one of the best dancers on this planet right now at my Pi’ilani Album

Pi’ilani was in her glory on this occasion (Kapiolani Bandstand on Sun 23 Jun 08). Every time I hit the shutter, she was doing something beautiful. I didn’t edit out a single shot. I consider the above shot the only photograph I’ve ever taken. Everything else was only trying hard.

I need a better camera.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

清您飘到夏威夷来！ Please drift over to Hawaii

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Related photos can be found in my Halau Hula o Maiki Album.

你的比丘尼太厉害吧？ 或是工作热烈不得了的吗？ 哪， 很简单对付哟！ 清您飘到夏威夷来！ 咱们这儿有许多像这所拍的小鱼性的女救火员。 参看他们好笑好玩儿，可以给你救内心的火，可不是吗？

南无阿弥陀佛
性平

Probably your nun is too fierce? Or else, your job is too demanding, no? It’s very easy to deal with that! Please just drift over to Hawaii! Over here we have many little-fish-like female fire-rescuing-personnel like those photographed here. When you check out how humorous and playful they are, this can save you from the fire in the depths of your mind, is it not so?

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Hawaiian Turtle Medicine

After Halau o ke Kia’i’s big blow-out at Kuhio Beach on the last full moon day (20 Apr 08), I knew that they weren’t going to make it back the next week. No way. If I had been one of those little girls, I would have instantaneously become a brilliant expert on the subject of how to be MIA from everything and everybody, but hula practice in particular, until my elders figured out how to re-connect with their planet.

As it was, I myself spent the best part of a week jumping in salt water and consulting with honu (sea turtles) about what life on this planet would be, if any human being chose to participate in it, for a change.

But for whatever reason, perhaps because my Taiwanese temple decided that being civilized towards foreign devils might be a nice experiment, for a change, I made it back to Kuhio Beach the following Sunday, and discovered myself being looked at by this mea nani nui loa (great big beautiful thing):

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This lady’s Halau is literally named for the Eye of the Turtle (Maka Honu). I know that because she told me. The Honu is an Hawaiian Aumakua (Animal Protector Spirit), And I’ve never seen such a clear example of a human being with that Aumakua as this indivudual.

I have Native American Blood, and according to the teachings of that blood, you know that an animal has become your protector when it establishes eye contact with you, either in a dream, or in the “real world,” three times in a row. Different Honu have been looking at me for years. If I ever get depressed, all I have to do is go to the water, and Honu stick their heads up and look at me. In fact, if I’m running any kind of emotional energy at all, good or bad, they always stick their heads up and check me out. Always. Apparently the Kumu of this Halau also has had the same kind of experience, and so she named her Halau after the Eye of the Honu.

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A few more shots of this wonderful Halau can be found in my Halau Hula o na Maka Honu Album.

Namu Amida Butsu,
Xing Ping

E Aloha o ke Kumu Hula, Hea!

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The title of this post means, “I call the Aloha of the Kumu Hula.” This is the only image that I could get of this Kumu dancing alone that made sense. This is a Kumu-loa a o na kumu, and most of the other kumu that she teaches are men.

This completes the images that I choose to publish from full moon in sidereal Virgo, 20 Apr 08. There are twenty images in all, and they can be found in my 20 Apr 08 sub-Album.

Such it is, American Buddhists. Such. It. Is.

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Namu Amida Butsu,
Xing Ping