Every year, for hundreds of thousands of tourists, seeing “real Hawaiian hula” in a hotel or in a packaged lū'au setting is standard fare. Commonplace too is receiving one's introduction to hula through any of the many competitions that take place annually in Hawai'i and, with increasing frequency, throughout the world. Still others find hula marketed for its exercise benefits, peddled as the latest fitness fad in gyms and malls across the country. But is hula the allure of exotic dancers evoking prurient responses from tourists, one moment tantalized by undulating hips only to be teasingly chastised the next to “keep your eyes on the hands”? Is it the crisp, impeccably synchronized movement danced before panels of judges at the several hula competitions that mark the year for many hula hālau? Is hula the movement, the meaning conveyed through the movement, or the full context out of which movement casts itself into an art form that inspires passion and perpetuates a traditional way of living?

For Mary Kawena Pukui, credited with helping to bring the rich traditional context of hula into the present, hula is “a general name for many types of Hawaiian folk dances” (1942/1980, 70). Pukui's laconic description says everything, and nothing. Everything because hula is the unique dance of the Hawaiian people. Everything because despite the homogenizing influence of hula competition, which has brought only a limited range of the vast hula repertoire to the public's attention over the past thirty-five years, hula encompasses many different styles and types of dances. But it says nothing because hula simply cannot be reduced to Hawaiian folk dance. Hula is a moving encyclopedia inscribed into the sinews and postures of dancers' bodies. It carries forward the social and natural history, the religious beliefs, the philosophy, the literature, and the scientific knowledge of the Hawaiian people.