Before you start wiggling your hips and mellowing out to all those lovely island grooves, consider engaging your brain for a bit of cultural schooling.
It’s pretty well known that Vancouver hosts a huge Three Days of Aloha in the Pacific Northwest festival, staged annually at the end of July by the Ke Kukui Foundation. That’s a nonprofit outfit launched here in 2003 by Deva Leinani Yamashiro, who wanted to preserve and spread her cultural heritage on the mainland.
“This year is our 15th year, and it’s going to be a big one,” said Ke Kukui board president Mari Helenihi.
A classic hula dancing competition the night of July 28 and a whole July 29 of Polynesian song, dance, crafts, games, food and fun are the biggest draws to Esther Short Park during the festival — but there are less prominent, more focused pieces, too.
If You Go
• What: Hawaiian Festival (aka Three Days of Aloha in the Pacific Northwest).
• When: 5-9 p.m. July 28, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. July 29.
• Where: Esther Short Park, Columbia and West Eighth streets, Vancouver.
• Admission: Free.
• Information: hawaiianfestivalpnw.com
• What: Workshops and classes on Hawaiian culture, music, crafts, dance, history, more.
• When: 9 a.m. and noon July 28.
• Where: Clark College, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver.
• Admission: $35 and up, depending on workshop.
• Information: hawaiianfestivalpnw.com
These started July 27, but you can still hustle down to Clark College July 28 to register and attend July 28’s workshops and classes. They’ll put you in slightly more serious touch with the history and traditional cultures of Hawaii — as well as contemporary issues and even some exploration of Hawaiian history right here in Vancouver. A park ranger will lead an archaeological walking tour of Fort Vancouver and its vanished Kanaka Village, where Hawaiians and many others from all over the globe blended in what you could call Vancouver’s first residential neighborhood. The tour starts at Clark College at 9:15 a.m. July 28, with transportation provided to the fort. (The $30 tour price includes breakfast.)
Other July 28 workshop options include a beginning ukulele class, lei making, Hawaiian massage (for dancers and for massage therapists), arts and crafts, chanting and “Ho’oponopono” — a traditional form of confessing errors and purging the fears and sorrows of the past.
Many of these offer both morning and afternoon sessions, but the broad “Exploring Polynesia” program, aimed at children age 5-13 (and their families), lasts all day.
Slightly silly
Then, at 5 p.m. July 28, the free fun in Esther Short Park begins.
First comes the annual Hapa Haole Hula competition, pitting experienced solo and group dancers in various categories against one another in what the Ke Kukui Foundation calls “a throwback to the early modern era” of pop Hawaiian music and culture. The contest rules specify that all music must date from 1900-1959, the heyday of irresistible, slightly silly Hawaiian-style hits like “Little Grass Shack” and “Hukilau.”
Friday’s winning dance soloists and groups will take center stage during July 29’s main event, the Ho’ike and Hawaiian Festival, which truly stuffs the park with song and dance, food and drink, arts and crafts for everyone. It runs 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and it’s free. Top dancers and musicians from the U.S. and Canada (including Hawaii) are regular attendees — and so are thousands of fans — so you’re sure to enjoy plenty of spectacular sights and sounds, and come away simply brimming with what natives call the “aloha spirit.”
Bring a low-backed chair or blanket. And bring your own reusable water bottle — because this is the event’s second year of intentional “E Malama i ka `Aina.” That means “caring for the land.”
