The Kilohana Hula Show, which opened on Feb. 15, 2024, as a free Hawaiian music and hula attraction at the Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell Amphitheater, will give its final performance at 9:30 a.m. Monday (March 31).
It was touted as a grand endeavor, with island musicians backing up a cast of hula dancers, sounding and looking like what Hawaii is all about.
The effort has dwindled down into an ensemble of five, still representing the aloha spirt in song and dance. But Kilohana will shut down at the end of the month, in a minimalist program at the Kuhio Beach Hula Mound, where it has been staged three days a week – on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays – since last fall.
Blow the conch shell: Monday’s show be the finale.
Kilohana had great intentions and enviable spirit, when it was launched in the amphitheater chock full of Waikiki visitors filling the seats, but no solid plan to keep the show afloat.
One of the troupers from the opening weeks is veteran entertainer Karen Keawehawaii, who also has been a rotating cast member playing for tourists at the Kuhio Beach Hula Mound.
“It’s been a little more than a year,” she said with a tone of sadness, about the finale she’ll be part of, as singer and ukulele player, and a kupuna.
But like any production, payroll becomes a major issue without paid admission.
Kilohana had lofty intentions, envisioned as a replacement, or a new-generation hula spectacle, like the long-running Kodak Hula Show, in same location in the shadows of Diamond Head.
But the Kodak original was sponsored by the camera and film company, the title sponsor of the original show, which ran from 1930 to 2002 without charging an entry fee. The end was somewhat logical; cameras and film were being replaced by telephones with built-in cameras.
Kilohana originators maintained the free-admission policy like its predecessor but clearly struggled with the overhead of a show in a zone defined as a Hawaiian park, forbidding admission charges. At one point, the operators wanted to do an early evening show with paid admission to subsidize the morning shows, which was nixed by the city.
Footnote: Google “Kilohana Hula Show,” and an online image appears with the show’s title, with a “Southwest Presents” credit. However, if the airline became a title presenter, the show has kept it a secret…
And that”s Show Biz…
You can add Hokkaido Ramen in Kaimuki as another long-time restaurant that closed for good in early March. The food was good and reasonably priced and the staff was always friendly.