Hula Kahiko – Ancient Hawaiian Theatre Dance
Hawai‘i – Embodied genealogy and myth in performative chant-dance
Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence
“Choreographing the Self Through Genealogy”
1. Embodied Lineage and the Aesthetics of Existence
Hula Kahiko is not merely a dance—it is a living archive. Each step, gesture, and vocalization in the chant (oli) performs a connection to gods, lands, and ancestors. Through it, the body becomes a mnemonic vessel—a palimpsest on which cosmic stories are inscribed.
Foucault’s idea of aesthetics of existence finds direct embodiment here: Hula Kahiko is a technique of the self, wherein the dancer shapes their ethical being not through abstraction, but by rhythmic participation in the unfolding of mythic time. Every undulation of the hands gestures toward a historical ontology.
2. Technologies of the Self as Ritual Discipline
The halau hula (hula school) was once a sacred training ground for ethical formation. Students underwent rituals, maintained taboos (kapu), and trained with strict bodily precision—not to entertain, but to become worthy transmitters of knowledge.
Foucault's late writings emphasize askesis—practices of inner cultivation. In Hula Kahiko, this practice becomes sensory: the dancer is not just conveying a story, but purifying the channel of genealogical truth. Movement and chant are fused into a single ethical project—an example of subjectivation through bodily performance.
3. Counter-Conduct and Cultural Resistance
Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct—practices that resist imposed norms—shines through the historical suppression of Hula during Christian colonial influence. Its revival is not merely cultural nostalgia, but an assertion of alternative subjectivities. The dancer performs not only for the gods, but against the forgetting of selfhood.
Thus, Hula Kahiko is more than tradition; it is an act of epistemic rebellion that crafts an identity outside the disciplinary norms of colonial modernity—what Foucault would call an “insurrection of subjugated knowledges.”