The Hui O Hawai‘i club at Oregon State University is hosting their 69th annual cultural celebration April 27 at the LaSells Stewart Center.
The event will include dinner and a traditional dance Ho‘ike featuring around 140 performers, according to Keoe Hoe, third-year student and Hui O Hawai’i logistics coordinator and teacher.
“Honestly it’s very rewarding to see this many people being interested in Ho’ike,” Hoe said. According to her, it’s one of the largest student-run events at OSU, which can also be challenging to coordinate.
Ho‘ike roughly translates to “display,” according to The Glosbe Hawaiian-English Dictionary
“Our responsibility is to come up with choreography for the different dances and then teach them to whoever’s interested in learning,” Hoe said.
There are a total of nine teachers in the club.
Hoe said she grew up dancing, starting at 1.5 years old in her home of O‘ahu, Hawai’i, and coming to live in Oregon without direct access to her culture was difficult.
“Ho’ike has kind of given me my fix for hula and for Hawaiian culture,” Hoe said. “It’s become my connection to back home.”
Hoe said that she learned about the club before coming to OSU and wanted to join it as soon as she came.
“I got to meet people who were involved, started coming to meetings, made friends and eventually became a participant in Ho’ike and I really found my second family here in the club,” Hoe said. “Over the years I’ve gotten more involved. I became a teacher last year and eventually became a board member this year.”
Hoe said that the celebration started as a lū‘au, which is a dinner service focused around food, but that that’s not really what it’s about anymore.
“It’s more about the hula and then the traditional dancing,” Hoe said. “So that’s why they made the switch to Ho‘ike within the past couple of years.”
Fear not, however, as the dinner remains a part of the service and includes kalua pig, poi, pani popo dessert, tofu poke as a vegan option and more, according to the club’s Instagram.
The performance will include traditional hula dancing as well as the Tahitian dances, ‘Ote‘a and Aparima.
Hoe said that the main show was themed around transportation, telling a couple’s journey of physical separation and reconnection.
The event starts at 3:30 p.m., dinner begins at 4 p.m. and the two-hour show begins at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for the public.
