[MERRIE MAGIC]
Johnny Renegade IF THERE IS ANY BUZZ surrounding this year's Merrie Monarch Festival, some of it is about the return to the competition of a respected though unconventional kumu hula who, along with his halau, has avoided the festival since 1995.
The unpredictable kumu
won't bow to the rules
By Tim Ryan
Star-BulletinAt Kenny's Pancake house in Hilo, Ray and Susie Otake said they believe the return of Johnny Lum Ho and his Halau Ka Ua Kani Lehua will "somehow raise eyebrows 'cause he always doing something different that crowds love."
"I think maybe Merrie Monarch been little boring when Johnny was gone," said Lillian Oda. "He'll spice things up for sure."
No one will say definitively why Ho dropped out of Merrie Monarch after competing for years, beginning in 1971.
Ho enjoyed an abundance of success at the festival, training a record five Miss Aloha Hulas from 1980 through 1983 and in 1987.
Even Ho declines specifics about his absence except to say, "I have been busy with other things."That's included trips to Japan and teaching hula four days a week in a second-floor walk-up by way of creaking, uneven wooden steps in downtown Hilo.
On a late weekday morning, a few halau members are busy assembling costumes. The diminutive Ho, dressed in shorts and tank top, with an orange bandanna around his forehead, quietly emerges from a back room to meet with a reporter.
To say Ho seems reluctant to talk is an understatement because during an hourlong interview he repeatedly emphasizes how much he dislikes public scrutiny.
"Why they always have to put my picture (in the newspaper)?" he says to no one in particular. "Then I cannot go anywhere without people looking.
"When you teach hula, people want to see how you walk, if you shake your ass. So I put my hand in my pocket so I no do that."
Ho's halau, often delivering powerful, breathtaking performances, has repeatedly won the audience but lost the judges' vote.
"It's the audiences who pay," Ho says. "The judges just put circles around the scores.
"Now I've had a year to prepare, and I'm ready for whatever they put on us."
Among the criticisms against Ho has been his composition of original songs, a practice that defies Merrie Monarch rules, which say halau can only perform material dating to King David Kalakaua's time.
"I write about now, but they say it's not kahiko if I wrote it last week," he says.
"So maybe I didn't enter all this time because (the judges) weren't open to that. What do you think?" he says. "I don't care what those judges think. The audiences always love me.
"I don't do things that make hula disgusting.
"Some people tell me that my hula dancers have a flair," Ho says, dragging out the last word. "Anyone can have the flair if one wants to be flairy."
While his dancers perform the contest's required moves, Ho has a way of testing boundaries."Sometimes the rain comes in this window, and sometimes it comes in that window, and tomorrow it comes in another window," he says. "But it's all rain. It's all the same dance, but maybe some dancers have the flair and some dancers move every part of their God-given bodies to the dance like you no see before."
Ho says he composes his own songs because it is easier to teach his style of hula to music he has written.
"What I do is traditional, but I wasn't born to the first traditional people, you know," he says. "Why do people only follow what their kumu or parents taught them? Things are never the same; they change all the time."
Ho, a retired state worker after 27 years, will not say his age or what he did for the state. He will say it is impossible to earn a living just from teaching hula.
He is at first reluctant to talk about any differences he has with festival officials but eventually hints that the judging is too limited and conservative, there seems to be some favoritism, and there has even jealously toward him by a few other kumu because his halau is such a crowd-pleaser.
"If they all want to move one way, do I have to as well?" he says. "If we all walk down the road and we're told not to stop and I see a beautiful red rose, I would think it is meant for me, and I would pluck it.
"Johnny Lum Ho is not stupid. I was there from the very first dance; I know the rules. I'm on my own road."Then in Hawaiian, Ho says, "Not all knowledge lies in one halau."
"You think since ancient days no one changes a bit here, a bit there," he says. "I reach in and take a little from here, a little from there, and put it in my basket to use in advancing and serving the public.
"These others get mad at you because maybe they have nothing in their basket.
"If you want to stay in the box and suffocate, it is your fault. If you don't let fresh air in, you die."
Recently, Ho said, a song he wrote about flies coming around while one cooks was criticized by another kumu hula, saying it was too risky to use at the festival, where songs more typically tell of the deeds of Hawaiian gods, chiefs and queens or praise the beauty of the islands.
"What is the risk of dancing about flies that come around when you cook? I guess just because it has my name attached to it."
Ho said as long as he composes his own songs, has his own halau and pays taxes, "I'll do what I like do. Everyone sees my name in the papers, so they know how to spell it for sure. ... Hello!" Ho says, then giggles. "I know why these Hawaiians are jealous, jealous. I did it more first than them."
Ho won't reveal anything about this year's program. "I cannot tell you if there will be a surprise, but I think it will open your eyes."
Then Ho breaks into a Little Richard shriek.
"You know, people are just waiting for me to bus' it out."
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