Transnational Hula as Colonial Culture

Abstract

During what was perhaps the first transnational hula tour of North America and Europe between 1892 and 1896, hula performers received sustained attention during a critical period when Hawai‘i's political status and proposed annexation by the US was a topic of national and international debate. Given Hawai‘i's subordinate economic and political status even prior to formal colonisation in 1898, hula operated as a form of colonial culture that became a part of mass, racialised entertainment on the rise in Europe and the US. While little known today, hula dancers who were previously members of the royal Hawaiian court circulated through international expositions, vaudeville theatres, dime museums and café-concerts. This gendered and sexualised colonial exhibition of hula associated Hawai‘i with the eroticised bodies and movements of women. However, late-19th-century Euro-American circuits also systematised opportunities for non-chiefly Hawaiian women to perform gendered cultural knowledge, travel and work. To illuminate the ambivalent character of transnational hula, as both colonial culture and opportunity for women performers, this paper traces the experiences of one member of the troupe: Kini Kapahu (also known as ‘Jennie Wilson’), previously a court dancer and later known as Hawai‘i's ‘first lady’.