(birds chirping) I went on several trips to the Big Island, to Volcano.

To sit, to meditate, to move to dance, to take in, to give offerings to Pele.

My love for Hawaiʻi and my interest in mythology are really what brought me to create Hawaiian Myths and Legends.

And I want the piece to be my, my voice about this mythology and about this land.

And I don’t want to say anything harmful or wrong or maybe not sacred.

I thought it was important to bring some of the dancers who are going to be personifying Pele to Volcano, to ask permission, to ask for guidance and to feel the energy of the land so that they take that energy into their dance, into their movement.

Part of the dancers training involves meditation.

It is the source of the state of consciousness that we work in which comes from Butoh.

So, before a performance, it is extremely important that the dancers meditate in order to center themselves for the performance.

Going to the Big Island, I feel that my movement is more grounded, rooted.

And I feel kind of like I can be Pele now.

So, the growth in giving a role like Pele, was to find fire, which Summer does not necessarily have.

Summer is very soft, very receptive.

Yeah, we also took the dancers out along the Chain of Craters Road to a spot that we thought was accessible and had nothing but lava.

I asked for some kind of connection with Pele and when I did that, I felt this surge of energy just coming through me.

What she said to me was that you know, feel my energy.

I am strong.

I am powerful.

This is how I want you to portray me as angry Pele.

This is what I’m like.

Although my lava you know moves slowly, it’s strong and it’s delierate and there’s no accident to where it goes.

There’s a purpose for everything.

(fire crackling, birds chirping) We’re in the ʻōhiʻa forest and we brought the dancers here so that they could sense the energy of the land and sense the spirit of this forest and of the whole volcano area, but particularly in this forest of Hiʻiaka because this is Hiʻiaka's domains, and also the ʻōhiʻa lehua tree, which is so prominent here.

And that's one of the dances that we're going to be doing is the myth of ʻŌhiʻa and Lehua, and their marriage.

I play Lehua and David DeBlieck plays ʻŌhiʻa.

And we're a couple in the myth of ʻŌhiʻa Lehua.

And it's important for us both to go to the ʻōhiʻa lehua forest on the Big Island and be together there.

We found ourselves actually drawn to one particular tree which was in itself a graft of one tree and another fern.

So, this joining together of souls of ʻōhiʻa lehua, of the plants was very much a part of our experience there.

It was really important to go into the forest, that ʻōhiʻa lehua fern forest that we danced in.

And in particular it was really felt vital to dance with Caroline who plays Lehua in the dance.

I really connected with that energy more.

And it was I think an experience that I really carry with me into my dancing.

I'm portraying Hiʻiaka and it was so wonderful to go into her forest and smell the lehua and hear the birds and feel feel the moist moss and Earth.

Going to the Big Island has just made made everything very real to me.

It's made the forest real.

It's made Pele real.

When we go from here and then when you do your dance, you just want to take in this energy here this spirit here the spirit of Pele and her family and then you carry that in your body.

All right, you guys let's go inside and look at the painting by Herb Kāne.

These are the three three faces of Pele yeah like your hair, it does look like your hair.

And then she looks she's you can tell that's just this like the three and I wanted them to understand Pele's family and to understand where all of these characters that I had been telling them about Kamapuaʻa and Hiʻiaka.

To see that mural and to see it all together as once.

When I was in the studio rehearsing the part of angry Pele it was really frustrating for me, basically because nothing that I was supposed to do really worked.

By going to the Big Island my performance in that piece portraying angry Pele would be a lot stronger just because I have more direction and there is a goal.

E Pele.

E Pele.

E Pele fire goddess, life giver,   soul viewer, Earth maker, hitch hiker, young beauty, hot body, hot tempered.

The script for Kamapuaʻa and Pele is written by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl.

What we're doing tonight is exploring the script with the dancer so exploring how movement fits to the words that she has chosen.

Hitching, lip sticking teeth biting, mind scalding.

It's really different writing for a dance company than it is to write for the theater for a play.

I'd have to think about the tone and the tempo of the music that the dancers are dancing to.

So that the words aren't to the temporal of the words it's not too far away from what the dancers are dancing.

She creeps along, Kamapuaʻa.

I find it really exhilarating, you know, to take a story like Kamapuaʻa and Pele, which is a really racy story.

Even when you look at the old texts, that's a pretty racy story.

And to interpret that in a contemporary way, is wonderful.

It's like breathing new life into this old, older material that we might not otherwise have looked at and thought about in in the way that we do when we see it interpreted for our time.

I'm sure there are always going to be people that are diehard traditionalists, and don't feel that traditional material should be interpreted in any kind of contemporary way.

I happen to not feel that way.

I, I've always identified myself as a contemporary artist, and I feel then an artist really needs freedom.

One more time and slightly smaller movements and I'm going to do it faster.

Okay.

Iona Pear of works from an improvisational base.

So, the dancers all trained in improvisation, and then I set up different situations in which they improvise, and then I watch them improvise and then I start shaping it from there.

We work in the Butoh dance form, which is from Japan.

It's a, it's an avant garde contemporary dance form, which is extremely visual.

And it's the essence of Butoh to work with imagery.

So often when you're working with Butoh, you see the picture, it's very much a tie between visual arts and dance.

We made our first full length production in 1992, which was the Mythology of Angels.

And I had never made an evening length piece before.

So, it was quite a momentous thing, and especially had never made an angel wing.

And after we finished making the whole production, which is quite quite an event of six sections, and each section, different costumes, about eight pairs of angel wings, feathered and everything.

After I had made all of those wings, I realized that I could probably do just about anything.

(instrumental music) Two years later, I created Worshiping Sun, which was the second evening length work.

And Worshipping the Sun looks at different metaphors and archetypes and cultures, and how they worship the sun.

(instrumental music) The hard part is taking the pictures and putting them into a material form.

And that's the challenging part I feel of being a choreographer.

I mean, I can sit in a chair all day and have pictures.

But then try to make it into a costume, put it on a dancer, give it music, give it meaning, give it something that the audience can relate to.

That's the real challenge.

The feather capes are part of the last section of the work the second half, which is the legend of Pele and Hiʻiaka.

Most choreographers make the dance and they go, wow, what are we going to wear?

And then they put the costumes on, but it's kind of the opposite for us.

And how can you make a dance with a feather cape without having the cape first?

The feathers to be sewn in the cape, there's a whole process that we go through before they actually go to the cape.

After you separate each one, you bundle them in three, which is give me a bundle.

Yeah, so you bundle them in three feathers.

So then you can actually go and sew in the cape in bundles.

See what's so cool and flip it around.

And they'll disappear because this other side is black.

Well, this is our little black light workshop.

And so, since the first piece is Pō is about black in a black light setting.

We created this little room to come in here and do just what we're doing testing paints and testing like how things how things move and in different ways and, and things like that.

I also work a lot with music in the beginning and I listen to music and whenever I listen to music, I see pictures.

It's like a movie screen in my head from one picture to the next picture.

And that's how I make the dance.

6,7,8.

(singing) I got involved with Iona Pear when Cheryl Flaharty heard some music that David Kauahikaua and I were doing and it's kind of a crossover music you might call it a blend of Hawaiian culture meets pop or new age or worldbeat.

(singing) Then when we go to the vocals, we need to bring up the volume, the highest the highest.

So, as we've been working through the music, it's been a work in evolution you might call and, and developing and adapting as the piece evolves and changes.

So, I'm very excited about it.

It's a great, great opportunity artistically creatively.

Very challenging, very rewarding to see something like this go on.

We're going to Ānuenue Elementary School which is a Hawaiian immersion school and performing two sections from the work with these children.

I want to share with them the bringing of Hawaiian ideas, mythology, language into a contemporary form, and having them realize the potential of their own heritage to come, come forward, and that's what I'm doing.

(instrumental music) Since we first started, Iona Pear in 1990, we've done a tremendous amount of public performances where we've taken dancers to the street to perform and hand out flyers for the show and try to encourage people to come to the theater to see more.

And so, this is what we're doing at the Moana Hotel right on Kalākaua Avenue, is taking some of the characters from Hawaiian Myths and Legends and letting them just improvise on the steps using some of the music and allowing tourists it's really an outreach to tourists in Waikīkī.

(instrumental music) You can even stay on one and do one movement, and then climb up to the next level.

So that's not just doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.

You can play a little bit longer.

That's kind of neat.

Yeah, no, that's nice.

And much better on quarter.

Thank you.

When we get into a new theater, we're trying to adapt the work to the theater.

So, we're trying to figure out what the distance is between here and there, how to move this set to that place where the dancers come out and stand.

So, this is our time to practice these a lot of set changes, and things like that, so that they will run smoothly, and look like magic when the audience is in the theater.

Take all of this energy and this love and light that is in this universe in this blessing.

And pull that energy into your body through the walls of this theater, and allow that energy to move through your body.

And to bless the stage that we dance on, to allow it to support us in this evening in the evenings to come.

(instrumental music) What I want the audience to get when the curtain rises, and then closes during Hawaiian Myths and Legends is more of an appreciation of the mythology of the Hawaiian culture, and especially an appreciation of how the Hawaiian culture comes from nature and how connected we are to nature.

I think that's one of the most beautiful things about this culture and I think it's an important thing to teach the rest of the world especially the Western world.

I want them to realize how man came out of the ocean in pō.

How man is connected to the ocean.

(instrumental music) I want them to realize how humans are like trees and ʻōhiʻa lehua.

It's a beautiful story about a man and a woman who were deeply in love.

Kamapuaʻa.

Pig God.

Man.

God.

Handsome.

Virile.

E Pele e. E Pele Fire Goddess.

Life giver.

Soul viewer.

Earth maker.

Lava walker.

E Pele e. I want to entertain them and Kamapuaʻa.

It's been fun and often a challenge to work with narration and have the dancers actually move only to narrated words.

(instrumental music) I'm taking the passion between Kamapuaʻa and Pele and I'm using the music of Bolero to show that passion.

Tell the story.

The story of Pele and Hiʻiaka.

(instrumental music) The last piece in the first half is very simple.

It's that of Poliʻahu who is the snow Goddess of Mauna Kea.

And I wanted to I just saw this picture of her in my head after you know, staring at Mauna Kea over and over again, of this woman, a top Mauna Kea, and her skirt becomes the whole mountain.

And these white feathers just falling.

I just wanted to take the essence of Poliʻahu, which is this pristine, serene, peaceful, high beauty and just just personify that.

(instrumental music) The legend of Pele and Hiʻiaka is a contemporary representation of the myth of Pele and Hiʻiaka who are sisters.

Who have a love triangle between Lohiʻau.

And basically, the legend is about the healing and destructive properties of these two characters.

(instrumental music) I see Pele as three faces.

Young Pele who is this seductress.

Beautiful Pele who goes to Kauaʻi to seduce Lohiʻau.

(instrumental music) Later in the piece I see Pele as the angry Pele the jealous Pele that burns Hiʻiaka's forest that kills Hōpoe.

From there we see the fire.

The fire comes after that.

And Pele, as as Nalani writes in her narrative, Pele stamps her foot and the earth shakes.

So now we see the fire which is led by my character of Lonomakua.

Dennis who plays Lonomakua comes in with with the with with a necklace made not from grass, but from matchsticks.

So, there's this this edge once again, and the fire being passed from one man as the as the rest of the men and are being passed from one man to the next man, kind of the fire as it rolls down the mountain.

Pele's fire as it grows and grows and grows and grows.

And then out of the fire we're left with the smoke, which is old Pele, which to me and I think to a lot of Hawaiian people is the real representation of Pele.

(instrumental music) I've created this miniature forest which is Hiʻiaka's ʻōhiʻa forest, and I created it with Melinda's music and a lullaby so that the audience will fall in love with Hiʻiaka, will fall in love with Hiʻiaka's forest, so that later when angry Pele, played by Joanne sets those little trees on fire, the audience feels the passion that I felt when I first read the myth.

The end of Caroline's solo as old Pele we see the final transference and the ending of what I feel is a cycle as Summer in her contemporary outfit now, walks up behind old Pele and takes the staff out of her hand.

This myth is to bring together Pele's ʻohana and in the in the end Hiʻiaka doesn't doesn't you know, forsake Pele.

She goes back.

She is always, always the sister of Pele.

She is always reverent to Pele.

Life continues life goes on.

We found the balance between between all of the destruction all of the anger all of the burning, and there's a healing in that.

And to me that is the final dance as the dancers begin entering one at a time and the other dancers give them the hand their hand and bring them on stage and they all dance together.

By the end of the legend of Pele and Hiʻiaka I want them to realize the forces of life and death.

We have the final falling of the feathers and the costumes reflect the rainbow and to me they reflect the rainbow of colors that are here in these islands now.

All of these different races that have blended together to make Hawaiʻi what it is now.

That is why the rainbow I think is such a beautiful symbol of Hawaiʻi.

It has all of the different colors that we have here and it's the colors of all of these different people being here living together sharing.

(audience clapping) (instrumental music)