How do you hula dance
Learn How to Hula Dance! | How to Hula Dance for Kids
SHARE THIS:
Famous for its sandy beaches and warm weather, Hawaii is a tropical paradise. Part of what makes Hawaii so special is its rich island culture. Hawaiians have their own traditions, language, and even their own dance form called Hula. Hula is a graceful art form that is danced to the words of a song (mele) or chant (oli). Ancient Hawaiians danced Hula to tell stories about their history and to celebrate the beauty of nature. But you don’t need palm trees to enjoy Hawaiian culture. Get ready to move your feet, swing your hips, and learn to dance the Hula with Little Passports! With a these easy-to-learn dance moves, you and your little ones can bring the beauty of the islands right to your doorstep.
Step-by-Step Hula
Move your feet!
Stand facing forward with your feet hip-width apart and bend your knees. Step 8 inches to the right. Bring your left foot to meet your right foot, keeping your left foot slightly off the floor, and tap the ground once with the ball of your left foot to complete the move. Repeat, taking another step the right, bringing your feet together, and tapping the ground with the ball of your left foot. Now go back the way you came! Step to the left, bring your right foot to meet your left and tap the ground with the ball of your right foot. Repeat this move to the left again. That’s it! Continue to practice stepping two times to the right and then two times to the left until you feel comfortable with the footwork.
Did you know? Hula is almost always danced barefoot.
Did you know? Traditional Hawaiian instruments that accompanied Hula dances were made of shells, rocks, and even teeth!
Now add your hips!
Keeping the same pattern–two steps right and two steps left–try adding some hip movements. During the Hula, your hips should keep a gentle rocking or swaying motion–similar to the ocean waves! When you step to the right, lower your right foot toe-to-heel and lift your left hip up. As you bring your feet together, switch so that your right hip is up. Before your next step, sway your hips side-to-side. Repeat the same motion as you take your second step to the right. Remember to sway your hips side to side before each step. Now try this motion to the left: left foot toe-heel, right hip up, feet together, left hip up, rock hips side to side. Repeat. Make sure to keep your knees bent and hips loose as you continue to step and sway!
Complete the move with arm motions!
Extend your arms out to the side at shoulder level. Bend your left arm so your hand is in front of the left side of your chest and your palm is facing down. Your right arm should stay extended, with your elbow slightly bent and fingers together. As you take your steps to the right, move your arms in a gentle, wave-like motion. Before your first step to the left, switch your arms so that the left arm is extended and the right arm is bent in front of the right side of your chest. As you take your steps to the left, continue to move your arms in a wave-like motion. As you move, keep your body relaxed and your shoulders still. Remember to switch arms every time you switch directions.
Did you know?
Hand and arm motions can be used to represent emotions or aspects of nature.
Add your own flair!
Once you’ve mastered this basic Hula dance, feel free to add some more moves from the list below to spice it up! Remember to use your face and eyes to tell the story of the song you are dancing to.
Ami: With hands on your hips, rotate your hips in a circular motion.
Ka`apuni: Keeping your hips moving in a circular motion like the Ami, pivot around the left foot and step slowly with the right foot around the left foot to complete a full turn.
Rising Sun Hand Movement: Start with your hands together at knee level. In a sweeping motion, move the arms outward and upward until they are above your head and fingertips nearly touch. Form the shape of sun with your arms extended over your head with your palms turned upward and your fingertips touching.
Uwehe: Standing with feet hip-width apart, step in place with your right foot. Keeping knees bent, lift both heels up off the ground in a popping motion, and then place them back down. Now step in place with your left foot. Do the popping motion again.
Hela: Starting with your feet together, point your right foot forward. Return feet together. Point the left foot forward. Bring your feet back together.
Love Hand Movement: With your palms facing your body, cross your hands in a X-shape on your chest to show embracing love.
Don’t forget to smile and have fun!
Learn How to Hula Dance! from Little Passports on Vimeo.
SHARE THIS:
Related Posts
Cozy Up to a New Tradition
Fireplaces and flannel. Cocoa and cuddles. Blankets and bunny slippers. What are your family’s favorite ways to get cozy? With back-to-school behind us and the holidays ahead, we think October is the perfect time to pause that to-do list for some cozy family fun inspired by traditions around the globe. Hygge Fire Stories The world…
Coffee Love, Across the Globe
As mornings get colder and darker heading into fall, parents across the U.S. shiver out of bed and head straight for the coffeemaker. Did you know coffee is the second-most popular drink worldwide, second only to tea? The U. S. actually has a whole day to commemorate its java fix: National Coffee Day on September 29.…
Foods of the World Scavenger Hunt
While many of us aren’t traveling as much these days, we can still introduce our little ones to the smorgasbord of tastes, sights, and smells out there in the world. In honor of World Tourism Day, let’s take a mouthwatering tour around the globe with this fall scavenger hunt for the senses. India: Pumpkin Paratha…
MORE FROM OUR BLOG
Trick-or-Treating Around the Globe
Christmas Traditions in Ireland
Enjoy This Pumpkin Donut Recipe with Family and Friends!
Prevent The Summer Slide, Prevent Summer Learning Loss
Celebrate the Holidays with a Santa Cone Craft!
Celebrate Hanukkah with Three Traditional Recipes
The Journey, the Destination, and Five Road Trip Hacks to Get You There
Explore Alaska, the Last Frontier State
Thanksgiving Craft
Explore Arizona, the Grand Canyon State
How to Make Delicious Christmas Italian Cookies
Seven Outer Space Crafts for Kids to Explore!
Get Free Activities and Exclusive Offers
Enter your email
Blog Categories
How Do You Hula? | Wonderopolis
ARTS & CULTURE — Dance
Have You Ever Wondered...
- How do you hula?
- Who invented hula dancing?
- What are oli and mele?
Tags:
See All Tags
- dance,
- Hawaii,
- hula,
- Cultures Of The World,
- History,
- Dance,
- Hawaii,
- Hula,
- Cultures Of The World,
- History
More than 2,000 miles off the coast of California float the islands that make up the 50thstate: Hawaii. One of the most enduring images of Hawaii is that of colorful hula dancers. Hula is more than just a dance to Hawaiians, though.
No one knows for sure exactly how hula got started. There are many Hawaiian legends that hold that a god or goddess, such as Laka or Pele, invented the dance. With origins among the Hawaiian gods, it's no wonder that Hawaiians consider hula a sacred dance.
Hula is an interpretive form of dance that has been practiced for centuries in Hawaii. Legend aside, hula was probably developed by the Polynesians, the people who originally settled the Hawaiian Islands.
Hula consists of dancing accompanied by either chanting (called oli) or a song (called mele). Hula dramatizes and interprets the words of the oli or mele and gives them meaning in a visual form via movement.
Ancient hula — known as Hula Kahiko — was performed by dancers as a sacred ritual with chants and traditional percussion instruments. The oli and mele told stories of legends, history, nature and devotion to the goddesses Pele and Laka.
Over time, hula became a part of popular culture and sparked interest beyond Hawaii. Under the influence of Western culture, a new form of hula — called Hula 'Auana — developed, using songs and more modern instruments, such as guitars and ukuleles.
People who have never seen hula dancing might not understand how complicated an art form it really is. Hula dance moves vary from simple to complex steps, including the Kaholo, Ka'o, Hela, 'Uwehe and Ami.
The most basic hula dance moves include swaying of the hips and sidestepping (called "vamping"). A complete hula dance can be quite a workout. Some dancers compare hula to an athletic performance!
Hula also involves many different hand motions. The hand motions made during hula represent the words in the oli or mele. For example, hula dancers use their hands to communicate words or ideas, such as a coconut tree swaying or waves rolling on the ocean.
Female hula dancers usually wear skirts and colorful shirts, while male dancers typically wear pants or a loincloth. Dancers often also wear leis, as well as wrist and ankle bracelets.
Hula can be done while sitting (called noho dance) or standing (called luna dance). Some hulas involve both noho and luna dances.
If you live in Hawaii and want to learn hula, you can learn hula in school or groups called hālau. The hula teacher is called the kumu hula. Kumu means source of knowledge or teacher, so the kumu hula is the teacher of hula!
Wonder What's Next?
Tomorrow’s Wonder of the Day is a cut above the rest. Join us to learn about marks that serve as memories!
Try It Out
Ready to hula? Get your dancing hips ready and do it! Grab some friends or family members to join you. The more people you recruit, the more fun you'll have.
The best way to learn to hula is from a Hawaiian dancer. If you can't make it to Hawaii, though, the next best thing is a good video tutorial.
Here are a couple of sites with good videos that will show you how to hula in no time:
If you want to make your hula even more authentic, make your own homemade lei to wear!
- How to Hula Dance 1
- How to Hula Dance 2
Did you get it?
Test your knowledgeWonder Words
- enduring
- origins
- sacred
- interpretive
- accompanied
- dramatize
- visual
- swaying
- loincloth
- Polynesian
- ukulele
Take the Wonder Word Challenge
Rate this wonder
Share this wonder
×GET YOUR WONDER DAILY
Subscribe to Wonderopolis and receive the Wonder of the Day® via email or SMS
Join the Buzz
Don’t miss our special deals, gifts and promotions. Be the first to know!
Share with the World
Tell everybody about Wonderopolis and its wonders.
Share Wonderopolis
Wonderopolis Widget
Interested in sharing Wonderopolis® every day? Want to add a little wonder to your website? Help spread the wonder of families learning together.
Add widget
You Got It!
Continue
Not Quite!
Try Again
Hawaiian hula dances: Studio "Aloha" - training, performances in St. Petersburg. Hawaii. The land where they know how to love: Hula KAMALI'I O KA PO
Our FIRST HULA VIDEO COURSE is dedicated, of course, to the most amazing dance, a parable that simply has no equal in strength and depth in Hawaii - video lesson
HULA KAMALI'I O KA PO - a dance about the Creation of the world.
This is not just a myth told in dance - these are the 4 pillars of the Hawaiian ability to live not just out of stress, peacefully - but to live in continuous living of the joy of life, love and gratitude.
My experience (and I have been dancing it for about 7 years now) speaks quite confidently that the practice of this dance acts like meditation or prayer, and imperceptibly changes something inside you over and over again - so that one day you suddenly realize that it has long been you look at the World through their eyes, and that you have already forgotten what anxiety and vanity are)))...
What else does this dance talk about?
This dance asks us, as human beings, to remember that we are also children of God.
He asks us to pay attention, to remember our kuleana (responsibility) as children of God.
Have we forgotten that we have the blessed opportunity to Live from the Great Mother, who gives us life?
Shouldn't we be responsible to our ancestors, to our loved ones, to ourselves? Shall we not take care of the earth ( Ayna )?
How do we live our lives?
What do we see happening around us in the world right now?. .
1. TECHNICAL PART:
- 10 videos with a detailed study of dance technique, incl. -
- special "warm-up" for mastering the steps of the dance and the correct transitions between them,
- separate videos for each verse, the study of movements, the secrets of plasticity, and practice (when only the studied fragment is danced the whole melody),
- videos combining already learned dance blocks with each other,
- well, the video of the dance is complete.
- all practice videos are mirrored for the convenience of training.
2. MYTHOLOGICAL PART:
- text, translation and sacred meanings of the dance (pdf)
- 30-minute video story of the Kumulipo myth with illustrations,
- plus the best book "Kumulipo" with explanations by M. Beckwith (English),
- some of my extras. articles about the Hawaiian pantheon of gods
3. SACRED PART:
The very text of this dance is so deep that I decided not to tell you somehow my own experience of approaching this hula.
First of all, the most important thoughts are already on the text sheet (item 2).
And secondly, this is the case when everyone should find their own path :)), and my emotions and my path here can only interfere, create unnecessary expectations, distort personal perception.
But... some suggestions of where to direct your thoughts, what ideas and exercises to try - I have collected for you. And they are waiting for you:
- 30-minute video of my author's findings (recommendations, techniques, exercises),
- including - one wonderful Hawaiian meditation,
- and some interesting references :))
Reviews:
HOW TO BUY THE VIDEO COURSE hula "Creation of the World":
Just click "Transfer", choose a convenient payment method for you (via Yandex-purse / by bank card), complete the purchase - and the link to the course will open automatically:
You can also pay directly on card (Elena Vladimirovna Sh. ):
Sberbank 5469550038157837
Alfabank 4261012633522520
In this case, write to me after payment,
which course you boughtand where you will send the money right away.
My e-mail: [email protected]
Vkontakte: .
With love, Elena Shandrikova
What is hula for you? : no4naya_reka — LiveJournal
.What does it mean to you to dance the Hawaiian hula?
.
.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Nadezhda Kovalenko, doctor, psychologist, shaman.
Moscow, 2017, February.
.
An invitation to dance
.
Surprising nearby. End of December, snowstorm. Damp, dank. The day is short, dusk is early. I had several client jobs that day in a row - all deep, dramatic. Then a group, also with catharsis, but sobbing ... Well, as a result, as in that advertisement, "mom is tired. " So no, I stuck the “nozzle”, and also went for intervision. It happens. Led. I have a lyamour with intuition. Couldn't refuse.
And the day before I had a wonderful dream. I have been in therapy for many years. Well, in the broadest sense.
First, a medical classic - I went all the way from a nurse to a doctor. Then insurance - the same question, but in a different perspective, here I am more of a guide, an intermediary. Then psychotherapy, at first personal, then people began to come - also different schools behind them ... And it really looked like one big well-worn up and down space. And walking is a long journey of mutual healing. I really treated a lot and this space is in me. And myself in it. Kh-kh…
And just in a dream it suddenly appeared as one whole. "Sick, get well." I just realized, and then I go out right into the dawn. The sound, the brightness of perception gently increase. Spring-summer, a riot of colors, flowers, everything buzzes, evaporates and smells sweet. A woman in a colorful long skirt met me. Looks like it's me too. She smiles and says: “Where have you been for so long? We've been waiting. Your job is to glorify Life!” And that made me feel good. Right here is a beautiful stream.
I woke up with regret... How is it to glorify life?!! And what exactly to do?
Oh, I'm from afar.... On the same intervision. I noticed a woman in a beautiful skirt. Honestly, the first thing I saw was the skirt. Give me, I think, I’ll take off the fashion)). Then we got talking. And I confessed to her, they say, I’m tired of “getting sick, get treated”, I want something new, like in a dream - to glorify life. Yes, I don’t know how.) She's all in a crisis... Then I was squeezed with money...
And she was silent for a while and suddenly answered: “I have this one. Come to Bolshoi Karetny, the hall under an umbrella. Hula dance. Hawaiian dance celebrating Life.
I laughed inside, they say, "where are my seventeen years - on Bolshoy Karetny". And like yes, at 17 I still loved to dance!
But here she comes. Couldn't come. Like a wave washed ashore...
She was called Ana Glinskaya.
And her skirts are innumerable))). And it's not a secret. More like a hobby.
Now the core. Hula. Dance brought from the Hawaiian Islands. Carefully grafted onto our Russian tree… has taken root! What does not happen in the world? I didn’t know anything about this phenomenon, there were already dancing girls in the group ... I just began to repeat the movements, follow the music. And swam like a swan. I confess right away that this is not only mine, I brought a friend, she has the same impression: “It was as if I had been dancing this dance or something like that all my life. It has everything!” So easy and natural. Hands in hula are soft. They tell stories. And the legs-hips swing the energy - also smoothly, as if the boat is floating. I bet it's available to everyone! Regardless of age, build and physical fitness. I admire when adult daughters dance with their mothers . ... There is something in this, a long-forgotten phonite.
Everything ingenious in this world is simple! And it's beautiful...
This dance is sacred, with deep philosophical overtones. “It goes through all the chakras, slowly and without straining,” I quote a friend, she formulated it in her own language like this.
For me, this find was an amazing and priceless gift (Ana says that Hoole has his own gifts for everyone).
Coming into contact with ancient tradition (sacred, originally temple) in music and dance, you get a drop of a magical elixir - some kind of primordial integrity, a standard love for everything that exists and special, right - not for the mind, but for human nature - a feeling of connection between male and feminine energy. And you receive it in your body, gratefully appropriate it, and something heals by itself.
I sometimes just hear the music inside, more often in the morning, and it's like Hula is inviting. Or the body itself asks, they say, we need to meet. And I dance. They are still sleeping, but I am Waitapu Mele and my arms and legs are swimming by themselves.
I am smiling now. Because I remembered one advanced colleague. He arrived after another overseas retreat, and the guru told him to "unwind the Tao in the morning." I, being far from Buddhism, but understanding something about the Tao))), for some reason I remembered this phrase as a pearl. Now, by itself, I have a special practice.
Yes, yes! Hula is the practice of harmonization.
And so it seems to me, just necessary for people in helping professions. I suspect that most of them already have something like this. I used to level out, recover with music and woods. But Hula is amazing every time. Working with heavy topics, passing through the gloomy depths of the unconscious, we become a little harder than it is necessary for ordinary life. What about professional burnout in doctors? I know in my skin many side effects. And often aspiring therapists in different fields ask the most questions about how to defend themselves. This is a separate issue.
Hula helps to recover, tune in. Works like a tuning fork. Like setting the state. And these are not passive methods, like massage, for example. Dance is I dance, I move, I walk and balance - myself. When you surrender to the dance, at that moment in time there is Me and Hula, and there are others like me nearby. Our soul aches a little and our body aches, and the brain is on guard of the borders (how much has been written about the suffering of the Russian soul) - and even healed injuries are still like a glued bowl ... The system itself is traumatized, in many families a certain standard happiness of being, calm acceptance of what is happening, the cycle of life, ways of living and seeking help from higher powers and the depths of nature. What can we say, with each other…. Yes, okay. There are such))).
Something priceless for the whole world has been preserved in Hawaii (I don’t know why there, probably, there were no big wars, global splits in society . .. -?) And there is also an amazing plant - lehua (I was told, I didn’t know before ), which alone is capable of sprouting on frozen lava after an eruption, so that another life will later join .... Doesn't it remind you of anything? I am very, very. Maybe this elixir of life is like Lehua juice, maybe this is it? That which rains sweet Hula on us. I would call it a sense of peace...
Of course, belly dancing is the #1 remedy for sexual energy. Mesmerizing and darkish, thick as honey and almost magical in the body to match. I have been dancing east for a long time, so everything is from practice. Hula is amazing and different. It has a lot of higher energies. The upper and lower streams harmoniously merge, and all this happiness flows rainbow-colored through the heart. During the dance. And in the end, the "casket" always closes softly.
Who is Hula? I dont know. I feel, but I do not know enough to convey to other people. I am still studying, getting to know each other, joining… But when Ana Glinskaya tells and transmits something, she is transformed – you can see it – and comes into contact with something BIG. She has access, a channel, she broadcasts well. Moreover, you can watch videos on the Internet and dance "from the sheet" yourself. But for some reason it doesn't work! Magic happens in personal contact, presence, resonance. The living is transmitted alive. Welcome! Welcome! E komo mai!
Join who is interested. Try it, feel it, I recommend it!
Hula is a dance about life, it turns its face to the bright side. It is also very good and, most importantly, it is easy (!) to dance about the feminine (the very thing with which many clients come to work). I am always for an integrated approach. So, this is the same body language that I personally (and there is plenty of experience and breadth) lacked - both as a client and as a therapist. Perhaps, in the Crimea - in the mountains and by the sea - you catch the same notes, but that is far and rare. And Hula is here! - dance at least every day, it opens access to power. And this power is lighter than shamanic, but very powerful and life-affirming! Mother Earth has it for everyone or is in the air.