Families of Kahuku Elementary kids packed the Cannon Activities Center on Friday, May 18 for the kindergarten through sixth grade elementary school May Day ceremony and performance. The fourth through sixth grade students performed traditional Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese and Maori dances while the younger grades danced to songs from movies such as “Coco,” “The Greatest Showman” and “Thriller.”
Mimo Latu, a Kahuku resident who attended the performance, said she had nine grandkids dance in the show. “I liked watching the variety, not all the dances were Polynesian. There were dances that were Japanese and Filipino.”
The May Day festivities began with four conch shell blowers running across the basketball court, stopping intermittently to play their conch shells on the way to the stage. Followed by the conch shell blowers were the sixth grade princesses and their princes. Each princess came out escorted by a prince with two ladies in waiting following directly behind the pair.
Each princess represented a Hawaiian island and wore different colors for each. After each of the islands had been represented, the May Day king and queen walked onto the stage wearing white. Their parents were invited to come to the stage and adorn the king and queen with a lei.
The May Day court performed a hula, unified as a sixth grade class and then splitting into boys and girls for another dance. The May Day queen, dressed in white with a large white crown on her head, took center stage to dance a hula solo dedicated to her father.
“It was cute to get to watch all the kids,” said Harmony Latu from Kahuku. “They put in so many hours of practice and we got to see it all come together. It was great to see the community come together and cheer for each other and everyone else’s children. Everyone was so supportive.”
Each grade level performed multiple dances from Disney movies or from various Pacific Island and Asian cultures. Children ran around in the stands while people took pictures of their children and grandchildren dancing.
Sione Vimahi, a Kahuku grandpa and BYU-Hawaii alumnus, said, “We’ve been watching and going to May Day for 30 years. It’s a tradition. We would come to see our kids and now we come to see our grandkids.” He said he liked seeing the Filipino dance come back because his kids performed it when they were little, but it has been several years since it was performed for May Day. “We have two grandchildren in the show, one in kindergarten and one in fourth grade.”
Writer: Savanna Bachelder