From tourist kitsch to old Hollywood movies, many people are familiar with romanticized images of women dancing the hula in Hawai’i. While few are aware of the sacred traditions of the dance, the role of male hula dancers has long been overshadowed by Western concepts of gender and sexuality. From ancient times, when men learned the dance along with the martial arts of battle, to the suppression of the dance under missionary ban, the hula survived underground for many years until the cultural renaissance of the 1970’s.

In 1975, at the height this revival, master hula teacher Maiki Aiu Lake asked her student, legendary entertainer Robert Cazimero, to open a school for only male dancers. With six young high school students, Robert Cazimero founded Halau Na Kamalei and it suddenly became ‘hot’ for men to dance hula again. Celebrating their 30th anniversary, Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula tells a story of Hawaiian pride through the examination of male roles in Hawaiian culture both in the past and the present.

This premiered on PBS yesterday, so check your local PBS listing for repeat airings.

Watch the trailer for Nā Kamalei: The Men of Hula