Nightlife: Hula hero

Coconut bras. Grass skirts. Smiling Hawaiian women.

That's the Western version of hula dancing -- which gets blown out of the water in this weekend's stage show called "I Land."

The touring one-man play is the autobiographical story of its writer and star, Hawaiian native Keo Woolford. In the tale, which follows him from boy to man, he exudes a hip-hop attitude as he searches for identity in a homeland transformed by decades of Western tourism.

His vehicle for self-discovery? Hula dancing. But for a buff football player and wannabe hip-hop dancer growing up in Honolulu, hula wasn't exactly the "manly" thing to do.

Luckily, Woolford's first hula teacher (he calls him "hula god") told him different.

"The way we were taught is that hula came from the Hawaiian martial art called Lua, which is a bone-breaking martial art," Woolford said by phone from Los Angeles.

It was also spiritual, a sacred dance performed for Hawaiian royalty.

"I Land" comes to Minneapolis as part of Pangea World Theater's Indigenous Voices series (playing at Intermedia Arts). Like American Indians on the mainland, Hawaii's indigenous people were overcome by European and American colonizers who came to the islands in the 1800s. Missionaries persuaded Hawaii's rulers to ban hula dancing, Woolford said. Seeing hula's economic potential in the 20th century, however, American businessmen "watered it down and it started to morph into that touristy thing."

Woolford, who boasts a tan, chiseled physique perfect for bare-chested hula dancing, never set out to write a play about himself. While he acted in New York a few years ago, a student in one of his hula classes suggested the idea for "I Land."

His path toward hula nirvana was just too good a story not to tell. He'd been a troublemaker in his youth. He sang in a popular Hawaiian boy band in the late 1990s. He acted in London's West End as the lead in "The King and I." And he studied under one of Hawaii's master hula teachers, Robert Cazimero.

The hula student who prodded Woolford to write "I Land" was a theater colleague, Roberta Uno, who eventually became the play's director. The two decided this journey would be best told in the form of a Hawaiian "talk story," an oral traditional emboldened with humor and exaggerated expressions.

Most everything that happens in "I Land" is true, Woolford said, even the most ridiculous stuff, i.e., the boy-band days. Woolford was a singer in Brownskin, a top-selling group in Hawaii that almost broke into the mainland with 'NSync's manager.

In the DVD I previewed, sequences like this are funny and well-suited for Woolford's physical acting. In fact, he dances his way through most of the play, whether it be hula, hip-hop or boy-band hysterics. (His teacher, Cazimero, choreographed the hula.)

All plot lines lead toward one goal -- Woolford's coming-of-age as a proud Hawaiian man who knows where he comes from. Ironically, it was a dance deemed "too effeminate" that got him there.

"It wasn't until I got into hula that I started to learn about my language and history," he said.

Near the play's climax Woolford unleashes a stunning poem, which sums up the anger and frustration of seeing his heritage washed away like sand on a beach. It's directed toward Elvis, who mined Hawaii in film and song. But the King is only a symbol of Woolford's larger beef. Here's a sample:

"Thank you for making it nearly impossible to dispel the images that you have imprinted on the minds of my fellow Americans, who regard our sacred ritual as irrelevant kitsch."

You won't after seeing "I Land." You'll never look at hula the same way again.

thorgen@startribune.com • 612-673-7909