At least I amuse the girls at Hula Class.

[kistha]

This Wednesday we were supposed to start learning "He Mele No Lilo." It's the hula created for the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch which is the reason I started taking Hula in the first place. I was totally hyper and excited when I got to class. When she got there, one of my classmates who went to Japan to visit her family this Christmas gave me a Japanese Lilo and Stitch calendar that she picked up while in Japan - my obsession is fairly well known in class. So we impatiently waited for the teacher to get there and we talked about various things - mostly how excited I was, and how I hoped we'd really finally be learning the Lilo Hula, and that if we wern't I was going to be crushed.

The teacher arrived, and finally we started learning it! I couldn't stop bouncing up and down in between sections. Then some of the girls came in early from the advanced class, and watched. Everyone was laughing at me and my enthusiasm, which I have to admit wasn't very well contained. The advanced class keeps asking me when I'm moving up (they are crazy!) and I keep saying never. Seriously, the advanced class so full I asked where I'd end up, in the closet? They also wanted to learn the "He Mele No Lilo." Although the teacher mentioned they'd be learning the Kahiko it's based on - I think they'd prefer the Auauna. Actually so far it's an interesting mix of Auana and Kahiko styles. I'm enjoying it a great deal so far. I made some jokes about coming to class in a Stitch costume, complete with grass skirt previously and after my hyper hijinks in class I may now have to actually do it...there's been some pressure.

Everyone wants to see it, but the bad news, is I can't find an adult costume to rent, and by the time I got done sewing one I'd probably be on my second year of hula. Ironically H who got me the calender could theoretically pose as Lilo, and I could do Stitch if I ever got a costume. Maybe if we ever have another performance - what am I thinking !?!?!?!?!

Anyway, I've finally got what I wanted out of Hula, the Lilo Hula.

Whoo-hoo!!!!!!!

Comments

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

One of the oddest experiences fandom has ever given me involved two improbable applications of hula. I don't know much about that form of dance, but I know the willfully perverse when I see it. And willful perversity is one of my favorite virtues.

At NorEasCon, the Rhode Island Science Fiction Society threw a party, themed "Rhode Island: The Other Island Paradise." One of the members had been studying hula for over 20 years, and she had choreographed a dance to the song from The Return of the King. Now, every time I hear "Into the West", I imagine hula dancers. The second hula number was apparently a standard from the 1950s, remarkable mainly for the fact that the central dancer was wearing a silver lame astronaut costume, complete with silver mylar grass skirt, bubble helmet, and cooling vents with a fan mounted on his back so he wouldn't keel over from the heat building up in his costume. The same moves that looked perfectly charming on the other dancers were hilarious when the spaceman did them.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Those are pretty damn odd. I can't even begin to imagine the impossibility of the translations (technically from elvish, to english, to hula sign) required to hula to a song from LOTR. Eeeek. I know a couple of words/signs reliably now, and I will admit to adding them randomly to songs as I'm doing regular dance, but only in fun, and the privacy of my own home....

Of course threatening your hula instructor with becoming a cartoon blue alien if you don't get your way is also odd.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

"Into the West" is the end-credits Annie Lennox song, so at least they got to skip the Elvish translation layer. But then, anyone with enough geek moxie to take the project on in the first place might not have been daunted by translating the Elvish languages into hula. We are an obsessive people.

Ain't nothin' like a Geek Thing.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that is some serious Moxie.

Sounds fun though.

[moonbear7.livejournal.com]

Maybe you just have to call in the sewing reinforcements...

to get the costume done :-)

I'd pay to see it.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

You know any sewing reinforcements who want to make a very difficult costume just to amuse me?

I don't. At least I don't think I do.

Of course, how much are you willing to pay could make the difference. :)