Ellen Castillo of Pukaikapuaokalani Hula Studio
"It was always in me. I just loved music, loved dancing."
Kumu Hula Ellen Castillo spoke of her youth and her training in hula.
Ellen was a student of Bella Richards. "Her teaching method was hard.
Sometimes, if you did something wrong you had to duck, because
something would come flying. But everyone that came out of there were
dancers."
Watching Ellen teach at Pope School, I am struck by the respect and
gentleness with which she addresses the keiki--and the keiki respond. She
has their full attention as she strums on the ukulele and gives them
direction. "I've gone into the schools in Kailua and Waimanalo," Ellen
said. "I love working with the keiki. I enjoy it."
Ellen speaks of her kumu and the continuance of tradition. "I sometimes
wish in my teaching to be the same as her. But you cannot be like your
kumu. And that is how hula progresses."
Aunty Bella had a distinctive style. "She was known for the ha'a--the
bending of the knee." Ellen said at times someone will see one of her girls
dance and ask if she had studied with Aunty Bella. "So it seems some of
Aunty Bella has gone through me to my students."
Ellen has taken her halau to the Merry Monarch Festival a number of
times. "I look at what I put up on the stage. I see that I have something
there. And then we go back and work again for the next year."
During the Festival she and the girls in the halau are usually too busy to
see very much of the other performances. "It's nice to be with the other
kumus and meet with them," she said. That her girls frequently place high
in the competition speaks well of the quality of her halau. "If you do a
good performance," she says, "that is my satisfaction."
We are at the beach with Sharla, one of her students that placed well at
the Festival this year. Ellen plays the ipu and chants. Sharla dances in the
wet sand at the water's edge. Then Ellen puts down the ipu and the two
dance--kumu and student. The waves crash behind them. The water
rushes at their feet. The wind blows the clouds and their hair into swirls.
Together they dance.
Pukaikapuaokalani Hula Studio is located in Kailua. Kumu Ellen Castillo
also teahes at Pope School Thursday afternoons, 2:30 for keiki, 3:30 for
adults. She can be reached at 261-6514.