CHRISTOPHER B. BALME HULA AND HAKA: PERFORMANCE, METONYMY AND IDENTITY FORMATION IN COLONIAL HAWAII AND NEW ZEALAND' Each April in Hawaii, local attention is In this paper I wish to explore what could focussed on the Merrie Monarch Festival perhaps be termed the roots of this new on. Big Island. Every year, the foremost performance phenomenon as parallel hula troupes of the various islands developments in the late nineteenth and compete for prizes in a variety of early twentieth centuries. The aim is to disciplines, traditional and modern. The explore a particular nexus between festival is a cultural event of considerable colonial contact and identity formation.2 magnitude. For several evenings in Although this general question has been succession local television provides live much researched in recent years, the field broadcasts of the performances lasting of performance is one area that has many hours. Two months earlier the Kapa received little systematic attention, even Haka Festival in New Zealand enjoys though Polynesian performance forms similar attention from public and media belong to those cultural aspects that are, alike as the country's Kapa Haka groups for outsiders at least, almost synonymous compete against each other. In both cases with these cultures. The focus is twofold: the indigenous culture of each country firstly, to demonstrate how two particular attains nation-wide media attention performance forms—the hula and the thanks to a performance form: the hula in haka—became subject to a European Hawaii and the haka in New Zealand. strategy of folklorization and While both forms had always enjoyed a theatricalization. Secondly, and perhaps certain popularity—the hula being almost more importantly, to indicate the way synonymous with the image of Hawaii as a Hawaiians and Maori themselves adapted tourist paradise, and the haka representing their cultural performances to meet an not just the Maori people but also on ever increasing ensemble of new occasions bi-cultural New Zealand as a functions ranging from the traditional to prelude to All Black rugby games—the the tourist, from the religious to the new prominence attained is certainly one political. manifestation of the so-called 'cultural Whatever these new functions maybe, renaissance' among Hawaiians and Maori where an indigenous people is required to alike. perform for the colonial gaze, the CHRISTOPHER B. BALME performance enacted tend to have in most Said defines orientalism as a mode of cases the metonymic gesture of standing representation and 'learned field', and in for the whole of the respective culture. notes that a field 'is often an enclosed The interrelationship between space'. He continues: performance and metonymy, or perhaps The idea of representation is a theatrical one: more precisely performance as metonymy the Orient is the stage on which the whole of culture, needs to be prefaced by a few East is confined. On this stage will appear remarks on the concept of metonymy. As a figures whose role it is to represent the larger figure of speech, metonymy is closely whole from which they emanate. The Orient related to notions of inauthenticity and seems to be, not an unlimited extension incompleteness. The dictionary beyond the familiar European world, but definition—`the substitute of an attribute rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.4 or adjunct for that of the thing meant'3— points to this disjuncture between a The discourse of orientalism, according to metonymic trope and the actual thing or . Said, `theatricalizes' the East in the sense the thing in its entirety. Viewed in this that it reduces and defines it, rendering it context, metonymy as a trope of cultural observable; it is as though the East or discourse carries with it more than just the Orient were a stage on which a set of signature of abbreviation typical of most dramatic figures of the Orient make their figures of speech. It has inscribed in it exits and entrances for the delectation and already a discursive strategy symptomatic edification of the Western beholder. Said's of colonial discourse: the penchant to concept of theatricality is both metaphoric circumscribe and contain. When and metonymic. It is metaphoric in the Hawaiians or Maori perform for the sense that he invokes the old theatrum (usually colonial) other, they are rendering munch simile. It is metonymic to the extent themselves observable and definable. The that the process he terms theatrical or whole tradition of folkloristic theatricalization embraces more than the performance, which begins in the old trope. It designates a particularly nineteenth century in Europe and is then Western style of thought which ultimately exported to the colonies for adaptation by was brought to bear on most of the the indigenous peoples, is framed within colonized world. Taking Said's use of the the metonymic notion that performance(s) term one step further, we can postulate can stand in for the culture as a whole. that theatricalization and colonialism are related phenomena. The link between metonymy and the very broad and often ill-defined concept of Theatricalization carries with it a number performance can be usefully focussed if of interrelated processes involving fixture we link it to the notion of theatricality as and closure necessary for, or inherent in, defined by Edward Said in Orientalism. any kind of mise en scene. The mise en HULA AND HAKA 43 scene of a culture, country or ethnic group examples examined here—Hawaiian and implies that this group can be represented Maori cultures—I will explore how the by a finite set of mostly recurrent props, `theatrical stage' of indigenous culture, costumes and corporeal signs. Whereas while not 'affixed to Europe' in Said's theatricalization is primarily a spatial and terms, is nevertheless subjected to visual limitation of culture, in the colonial analogous processes of synecdochical context it is invariably accompanied by the limitation. temporal closure of folklorization. The discourse of folklorization, whether in a REINVENTING THE HULA European or a colonial context, seeks to The history of hula in. Hawaii runs in many `fossilize' cultural artefacts somewhere on ways parallel to the fortunes of the an ill-defined but usually pre-modern, pre- indigenous culture. In pre-contact times it technological time line. As we shall see, was an integral part of the religious and theatricalization and folklorization work cultural fabric of Hawaiian society. From hand in hand as concomitant processes in 1820 onwards it was severely attacked by colonial and indigenous discourses which missionaries of different persuasions until reevaluated and recoded performance it all but died out except in more remote forms for an altered cultural and political areas.' Under King Kalakaua, who ruled context.5 from 1874 to 1891, hula flourished again, Dance is perhaps the form of expression yet within a fundamentally altered cultural the West most often used and adapted for context. When the Nerrie Monarch', the purpose of theatricalizing other assumed the Hawaiian throne in 18 74 he cultures. In the context of Hawaii, the called kumu hula (hula teachers) to his performance form of hula became court and revived the tradition of hula synonymous with its dance component, performers as part of the court retinue, as which in turn came to stand for the had been the case in pre-contact times. indigenous people of the country. In the With Kalakaua begins what might be called case of Maori, it was mainly the `wardance% a conscious reinvention of tradition for the the haka, which from a variety of purpose of cementing Hawaiian national performance forms attained the identity and reinforcing indigenous metonymic force of representation. The political aspirations which were coming process of colonization was concomitant under pressure from the white settlers.% with the theatricalization of the objects of Although the reintroduction of ancient colonization. The strategies of hula as a form of court entertainment was representation that Said terms orientalist initially conceived as a demonstration of are thus metonymic and theatrical with a indigenous traditionalism, it led ironically few selected figures having to stand in for (or perhaps logically) to major innovations the larger whole of the Orient. In the in the performance form itself; it `became a 44 CHRISTOPHER B. BALME breeding place for change', as dance contact times had consisted of a skirt made ethnologist Adrienne Kaeppler notes.' of tapa cloth, necklace and head-wreaths, These changes received dynamic public bracelets and anklets for both male and demonstration during the 188os when female dancers. There was, however, Kalakaua staged large hula festivals. These considerable variation in the costume celebrations were extensively depending on status, sex and type of dance. photographed, and a large number of Early evidence, which is exclusively these photographic documents have reliant on pictures and descriptions by survived. Analysing a selection of these European explorers and travellers, iconographical documents I am suggests that women danced bare- particularly concerned to read the breasted, which was certainly one of the semiotics of hula costume as an indicator causes of missionary opposition.9 This of the multiple cultural functions that the earliest photograph of hula, an ambro performance form was coming to assume. already prefigures the tradition of studio- produced studies for the tourist market. Figure 1 dates from i858 and is the earliest The floor has probably been retouched to extant photograph of hula. By this time give the appearance of sand. The costumes missionary influence had completely depicted here are also characteristic of one changed the costuming, which in pre- image of hula that was to persist FIGURE I throughout the nineteenth century. The Hula dancers, circa 1858. (AmbroOpe, wide cloth skirts, tightly buttoned blouses photographer unknown). Reproduced by and fibre anklets represent the exact permission of the Bishop Museum.