Victoria Holt Takamine – Pushing the Boundaries

Last December, in a special ceremony at Washington Place, Victoria Holt Takamine, Kumu Hula, Hawaiian rights activist, cultural advocate, and founder of PA‘I Foundation, received the prestigious Gish Award, along with a $450,000 cash prize. She is the first Hawaiian to receive this prize, and this is the first time hula has been recognized on the same international level as other performing art forms.

The Gish Award was established in 1994, through the will of actress sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish, renowned for starring roles on stage and in silent movies, then sound. Lilian had the longer acting career, working with director D.W. Griffith in 40 films. Considered one of the pre-eminent awards in the arts, the Gish is presented annually to an individual who has “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” Past recipients include such notables as Bob Dylan, Arthur Miller, Robert Redford, Pete Seeger and Spike Lee.

Vicky’s journey to the Gish began at age 12, when she started dancing with the legendary Kumu Hula Maiki Aiu, “Aunty Maiki.” In spite of her mother’s admonishment that she would quit after one year, she fell in love with hula and embraced it as a lifestyle.

“As a teenager, Kumu sent me to the pier, to Aloha Tower, to dance with Uncle Bill Ali‘iloa Lincoln. We met all the ships,” says Vicky in an interview on Creativemornings.com. “I danced with Loyal Garner’s mother at the airport. We met all the flights. I danced every night in clubs from one end of Waikīkī to the other, along Kalākaua Avenue.”

Hula became a full time career for Vicky. So much so that when the manager called on a Monday and said they needed a lū‘au show on Friday, she was able to call her brother to come play music, borrow costumes from another kumu, and pull strings to make it happen.

“I never had a real job till I started my nonprofit,” Vicky continues. “I always danced hula. And I learned the whole craft: lighting sound, music, production… you need to learn from the bottom up.”

She graduated from Kamehameha Schools, Class of 1965 and went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in dance ethnology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Vicky continued as a dance lecturer and choreographer at UH Mānoa and Leeward Community College for over 30 years.

In 1971, the same year the Merrie Monarch Festival premiered, Aunty Maiki advertised for student candidates for ‘Uniki, the extensive protocol required to promote dancers to teachers. That inaugural papa (class) was named for the lehua flower, first to bloom after a lava flow. Papa Lehua included future kumu Kalena Silva, Kaha‘i Topolinski, Leina‘ala Heine, Robert Cazimero and others. This was a first in modern history. Vicky and Kumu Mapuana de Silva were in Aunty Maiki’s second ‘uniki class, Papa ‘Ilima.

After graduation as Kumu Hula, Vicky’s own hālau was named by Aunty Maiki, Pua Ali‘i ‘Ilima (Royal ‘Ilima Flower). The hālau is still dancing, directed by Vicky and her son Kumu Jeffrey Kāneka‘iwilani Takamine. They competed in last year’s Merrie Monarch for the first time since 1984.

The years passed quickly, and in the 1990s, Vicky’s future daughter-in-law was in law school, and they were examining Hawai‘i Senate Bill 8, House Bill 1920. This bill, if passed into law, would require Hawaiian people to account for their traditional gathering rights.

Vicky says, “Hawaiians would have to go to the DLNR and list every plant you gathered, every flower, every fern, every fish you caught . . . unless you had a ‘clear preponderance of evidence that your ancestors gathered like this prior to 1893.’”

“That did not sit well with me. At all,” Vicky continues. “I gathered all the kumu hula that I knew of—I went through the phone book—Pua Kanaka‘ole, Keali‘i Reichel, and many others—and I said ‘We’re doing a demonstration at the State Capitol next week. Can you bring your drums and your students down to the Legislature?’”

Vicky and other kumu hula chanted and drummed for 24 hours, from 12 noon to 12 noon the next day, effectively shutting down the Capitol, as well as shutting down that bill.

“To me that was the largest demonstration of social engagement I’d ever seen,” she says.

Not long after, Vicky read that the state spent $2 million on artwork for the new convention center, without including one Hawaiian artist. She petitioned the legislature unsuccessfully for two years, then in 2001, she decided to do something about it herself. She established PA‘I Foundation, to provide mentorship, training, grantwriting and financial support to Hawaiian arts and cultural programs. (PA‘I is an acronym for hālau Pua Ali‘i ‘Ilima, as well as a Hawaiian word that means to strike, slap, or sudden impact.)

One of the first things they did, in partnership with the Bishop Museum, was to create “MAMo,” Maoli Arts Month (now Maoli Arts Movement), a series of events featuring Hawaiian cultural artists of all types.

“Art is not just what we frame and put on a wall, it’s what we wear, our tattoos, our lei-making, our costuming. I wanted to celebrate that facet, so we started the MAMo Wearable Art Show,” says Vicky in an interview with StanceOnDance.com. “Part of the wearable art show evolved from traditional to contemporary fashion design. That started in 2006.”

The MAMo Wearable Art Show has become a fashion must for Hawaiian contemporary designers, like Manaola Yap, the first Hawaiian designer to take a collection to New York Fashion Week, in 2017. Manaola is a fourth generation hula practitioner and proud member of the multi-talented Lim family of Kohala on Hawai‘i Island.

Vicky remembers young Manaola helping dress his mother, Nani Lim Yap, for one of the MAMo shows.

“I told him he should be in my fashion show, and he said ‘I’m not a designer.’ I told him ‘Oh yes you are. Give me ten looks.’ And he gave me ten looks that blew everybody away.”

In 2021, the Italian high-fashion design company REDValentino was criticized for using a Hawaiian quilt pattern in several of its garments. They reached out to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to apologize, and Vicky was involved in the conversation.

“They apologized, and they pulled everything back, and tried to work with the Hawaiian community to find a way to make amends,” she says in an interview with Hawai‘i Public Radio.

REDValentino subsequently partnered with designers Kehaulani Nielson, Manaola, and Kini Zamora to create textile designs for the Chelsea in Bloom show in London. Then, in January 2024, Dana Ledoux Miller, director and co-writer of Moana 2, stunned the Golden Globes runway in the first-ever Manaola-Maison REDValentino collaboration gown.

The MAMo experience is just one facet of PA‘I Foundation. And PA‘I Foundation is just one facet of a woman who seems to have boundless energy and bottomless love for her Hawai‘i. In addition to the arts, she has pulled together national organizations as collaborators to raise $55 million, and build 84 housing units for artists, the Ola Ka ʻIlima Artspace Lofts.

In 2023, Vicky opened PA‘I Arts & Cultural Center on the Lofts’ ground floor. The Center contains a 3,000-square-foot performing arts and dance studio, 1,000-square-foot art café and retail gift shop, and a 1,000-square-foot mezzanine with offices and meeting space.

But wait, there’s more. She served as president of ‘Īlio‘ulaokalani, a coalition of traditional practitioners, president of KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance of Hawaiian and Environmental organizations, co-founder and president of Aloha ‘Āina, a Hawaiian political party, and owner operator of Holt, Takamine Productions. She has worked with artists in residence at the Doris Duke Foundation Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture and Design, and serves as their guiding cultural advisor. In February 2025, she will be named a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i.

The Gish Award describes her as a “highly accomplished figure” who has “pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change and paved the way for the next generation.” All true, except for one thing. She’s still doing it, pushing, contributing, paving the way.

“Our culture is alive. Our culture is there. We still practice our traditional Hawaiian cultural practices. Artists are still creating. This is not an art form that is in the past, archived and put in a museum,” Vicky says in an Arts.gov interview. “I like to think that I earned the title of kumu hula from Aunty Maiki. But the truth is, I am still earning it… the learning is never complete. ‘A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike i ka hālau ho‘okahi. Not all knowledge is found in one school.’”

Other resources:
Hawaii‘i Public Radio, interview with Cassie Ordonio
Hula Is Life, Hawai’i News Now, interview with McKenna Maduli