Magnolia native Lita Hoke says she and a couple of girlfriends started taking hula lessons when she was 15. It became a lifelong passion, and now-more than three decades later-she owns and runs the Sunshine From Polynesia dance school out of her home near Discovery Park.
Hoke started performing as a hula dancer when she was 16, and she later married her high school sweetheart, a Hawaiian man named Richard Hoke. There's a certain irony in that. "His family wasn't really into hula dancing," she said. "My husband learned hula from me."
A Seattle City Light senior meter reader, Hoke said she never intended to open up a hula studio, but circumstances forced her into it. Catharine Blaine School was planning a benefit show for Ethiopia in 1985, and Hawaiian dance was going to be part of it, she remembers.
Problem was, Hoke said, she needed more dancers. "That's when I enlisted all my neighborhood kids," she said of giving local children free dance lessons for three months before the show. The Blaine show was such a success that parents came up afterward wanting their kids to take lessons, Hoke remembered.
So a school was born, and Hoke now teaches students from 3-years-old up to adults. Some mothers even take lessons with their daughters, she said.
And some students have stuck to it. Kupala Owen, 24, started taking lessons from Hoke when she was in third grade, and now she's an instructor at the school. "I started teaching a couple of years ago," said Owen, a first-year law student at Seattle University. "My life is either law school or hula," she added with a smile.
A Magnolian who was born in Hawaii, Owen said hula dancing is very flowery and that the precise hand movements tell stories. "You're passing the culture down, basically." That's important, she added, because Hawaiians didn't have a written history.
It's not easy, Owen said of hula dancing. "You're trying to get your body moving in ways you're not used to." The school also teaches Tahitian dancing, which is much different than Hawaiian dancing, she said. With Tahitian dancing, the hips move much faster, Owen explained.
People are also surprised at how physically demanding the dances are, Hoke added. "Your knees are bent all the time," she said of one difficulty. "It's incredible exercise. The kids are exhausted afterward."
A maximum of seven students at a time take lessons because there's not enough room for more than that in her home, which Hoke's husband enlarged to make room for a studio, she said.
There are multiple dance classes for different age groups that include both male and female students, Hoke said. Tahitian drumming lessons are also offered. She used to teach an average of 12 to 15 students in her monthly classes, but that number has climbed to 28 in the last couple of years, Hoke added.
However, she said, the school also stages dance workshops, including one six-week session that took place at Lawton Elementary School in Magnolia. "We did that at a few schools," Owen added.
The dance school also has a dance troupe that performs, which is part of the learning experience, according to Hoke. "You can learn a song; that's one thing," she said. "But performing it is a different thing."
No one is required to do it, but performing the dances in public also gives the students self-confidence, Owen stressed. "It's amazing to see the girls start out shy and awkward," she said. "We've watched them grow up and get this confidence."
The troupe performs in nursing homes, for birthdays, weddings, luaus, company picnics, corporate events, anniversaries and fundraisers, according to the school's brochure. "We've even done hula-grams," Owen said. The troupe also performed at the opening of the Hula Hula club on First Avenue North in Lower Queen Anne, she added.
Perhaps the strangest gig the troupe has ever performed was for a closed meeting of the Green River task force, Hoke said. They were hired by the mother of one of serial killer Gary Ridgway's victims, she said.
Hoke also has a photo demonstrating that former governor and Queen Anne resident Gary Locke got into the swing of things-so much so that at one of the gigs he donned a grass skirt. She didn't say if Locke shimmied his hips.
Hoke, who's retiring soon from City Light, said she makes a little money with the school, and Owen said they're starting to get into the business side of the dance school.
"We're kind of stepping it up," is how Owen put it. But preserving Island culture is foremost in their minds, according to both Hoke and Owen. "We love it," Owen said. "It means a lot to us."
The Sunshine From Polynesia dance school can be reached at 282-0769.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.[[In-content Ad]]
