Spectrum Hawaii; Waipahu Garden Park, Do-woppin in Paradise, Poetry and Pasta making language sing ; Lava Sculpture Magma Magic, Way Jacintho Kauai Woodscraftsman, Dancing with Simeon and Marie
- Transcript
The following program is a production of E.T. in Honolulu Hawaii Public Television. The following program has been funded in part by grants from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the people of Chevron in Hawaii [Voiceover] Waipahu is home to a cultural garden that speaks of a sugar culture not so long ago. The love notes bring the doo-wop sounds of New York City to Honolulu and Spectrum Hawaii. But first, a glimpse of three Honolulu poets who proclaim their vision of poetry amid Italian pasta and the Greek amphitheater.
[musical interlude] [unintelligible] [Person on phone] Yeah, yeah. No, no I'm not doing dreams
That's too long. Yeah, they're shorter poems, and it's a sort of a select audience. Yeah, yeah - listen it's pretty good, it looks very very comfortable in there. Are you ready to go inside? Oh, okay. Hold on, well listen - okay, okay Bruce, I've got to zip now, they've come to arrest me. [Stanton] Poetry really is the most basic of all the literary forms. This is something that's difficult to put across, particularly if you're talking to young people today because they feel that, well, the newspaper, or just talking is the most basic thing. But of course in all the world's cultures, writing poetry -- poetry and dance -- the performance of words, the magical quality of words is really the basic and primary way in which people used words that were meant to be important. Right. [Quagliano] At its earliest it was synonymous with music. Most of the world
languages have a word for poet of a poem and song which is the same thing whether it's "canto" in Italian, or [unintelligible] even in Hawaii, "mele" means poem or song. I'd like to start with about jazz. I'm very interested in jazz and I've written on jazz for various publications, and this is a poem that appeared in a magazine entitled Bebop and Beyond. And the poem is entitled "Say Jazz." to the Jazz documentary film maker who announces he no longer uses the word "jazz." Go ahead, use the word "jazz." It's okay, the word "jazz." Afro-American music might
mean "jazz." Docu-verite might mean "movie." Use the word "jazz" if you want to, use the word you want. The jazz men, the music makers, who say don't say "jazz" don't own the word "jazz," they don't own the word "jazz." Use the word "jazz" if you want to. Don't lose your words. Don't shuffle your words away. Use the words you want, say "jazz" if you want to. Say "jazz" if you want to say "jazz." Say "jazz." [Friedson] I think I've watched the initiative, of course, in my own day, go from England very much to America. Now I think a lot of people feel that the matter of the action with the exception of song lyrics belongs in the United States. [Voiceover] Tony Friedson, Joseph Stanton, and Tony
Quagliano are poets in Honolulu who also teach, write textbooks, give poetry readings, and think about their art. [Friedson] The Americans have only 200 years of past to lean on and the result is there's much less there's much less accidental leaning than there is with the Englishman whose phrases keep coming up. And even the rhythms and the rhetoric is that way. [Voiceover] Tony Friedson, upon visiting the exclusive Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air it was quite sensitive to the many intimidating notices posted on Garden State fences warning every passer by to keep his distance. [Friedson] Okay, something about ecological and social pollution, California-style. The Flowers in Bel Air. One must not pick the flowers in Bel-Air. Securely armed, no cross-kind pollination.
Sadly the space streets will harm the handsome star bound force. One must not smell the flowers in Bel Air. Electronically surveyed do well-kept beds push the pampered petals instant response and lift the sprouting, smog-free buds. [unintelligible] little note on Bel Air. [Quagliano] Language, after all, is the carrier of our culture and is an enormous burden on languages. In many ways, language can be considered coincident with culture. [Voiceover] Joseph Stanton, after watching a Japanese Noh theater performance, began thinking about ghosts. [Stanton] And the feeling I'm going after here is something having to do with the ghostly state, somewhere after death. But before we might imagine there is a feeling of rest. This strange feeling that you so often gets in Noh dramas. This is called " Matsu Kaze" and it is one of the ghosts, a woman, who is speaking.
The Autumn Wind is full of the sea. We hang our sleeves over our shoulders, dripping with salt. How beautiful this evening at Summa, the moon walks a thin bridge of dreams. The voices of fishermen are distant tinkling on the breeze. A heron chuckles and the tall reeds. We sisters are ghosts of our long-lost loving, and must wait, always, Always in this strange singing sleep. So cold, so clear. This long night. How shall we pass through it. [Voiceover] The ancient Greeks esteemed their poets highly and believed them to be the true teachers of mankind. What does today's poet enjoy about teaching literature? [Friedson] Well I like to leave people of course with that with a face for that awkward situation
where they find suddenly that they love something good that they thought they hated. You go to New York because she's doing so well. She gets some opportunities to New York. And the problems get worse and worse. Body is starting to get poisoned as she gets further and further. So now of course she's off to herself. Is it the city? Was it the L.A. smog which she had at first thought, or is it just simply that the stage, the theatre, is poisonous. She finally decided that the theatre was poisonous, so she wants to come back to Hawaii. But now she's doing so well they won't let her. That's right. Very good [unintelligible] [Voiceover] Old-town Waipahu has a turn-of-the-century flavor to it that can't help but take you back to a time when sugar was king. [unintelligible]
[Malterre] When we went out, the sun wasn't up, and we came home the sun was about [unintelligible] down by the time they got back home. Because the workers in the '30s were only earning a dollar a day or ten cents an hour. [Voiceover] The promise of these high wages brought waves of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, and Koreans to Hawaii's shores. Many stayed on, adding yet another layer to Hawaii's diverse cultural makeup, and here nestled within the shadow of the O'ahu Sugar Company mill, the Waipahu Cultural Garden Park seeks to preserve and pay tribute to these immigrants. [Kawamoto] It was an idea back in early '70s, an idea that was to preserve the plantation way of life for the present generation to enjoy and for future generations. And the idea being that we needed to know, or the people needed to know, where they came from to know where they're going. And that's the essence of the whole idea of the Waipahu Cultural Garden Park.
Around 10,000 school kids come to the park. They come here and we try to tell them what the life of a sugar plantation worker was. Some of these kids that come here, you show them a sugar cane. That's the first time they ever saw sugar cane. And then we tell them the reason why they came here was because of the sugar cane. [Voiceover] Within the museum walls are storage for many artifacts and room for multiple displays on a variety of subjects. This is a rotated three to four times a year. But it's the steady support of volunteers. That's the real treat here. [Malterre] I tell the kids that when we used to go to the bathroom, we used to take three things. [unintelligible] You took your lantern, because you have to see where you were going. You took a box of matches, and took up a newspaper. They said, "Gee, why'd you take a newspaper?" So you know when you went out to the outside door, bathroom, the first thing you did, you lit the newspaper, you light it under the the seat. Otherwise, the centipede or the scorpions or
spiders would come in there and bite. [Pang] My specialty is tours to my garden, and herbs, and Hawaiian plants. These look like wild violets, but they call "Puhee Koʻoloaʻula'" (sp?). Many people came and they said you can chop it up and make a salad and eat it and it will improve your brains, more talent. So the students have the biggest kick about this. They all want to chew on this. Most of these plants were planted by my husband and I because we used them before, we were brought up with medicinal plants. This is the guava shoot. It's an off-runner from the big guava tree and during the olden days when people didn't have money to go to the doctors, when they had diarrhea, they would come and
take five of these shoots, wash it and chew on it and that would do the job. I'm connected with the association that first built the cookhouse. It was built in 1908 and it's being restored by one of our members here. So he has to take out all the termite boards and he has to go way down to Waialua to get the same age lumber. My house was built in 1936 after the big flood they had here. And we were staying there until about two or three years ago, and now it's just a day house. We just come for the tours and things like that. [Malterre] Some of the homes had baths, but the majority of the camps, was a community bath, where the women went early part of the day, and then the men after work used the same bathroom. The same, you know,
"furo" we called them "furo." As a youngster I used to go up to the, where the stable was. And I used to go watch the blacksmith. He used to show all the different views on the horses, and I saw what he used to do. So when I relate to the blacksmith shop there, I can tell the children, this is how it was done. [Voiceover] As the winds of change blow throughout the Hawaiian Islands, he Waipahu Cultural Garden Park hopes to keep us attuned to our islands roots. We're very excited about the future. We're going to build about 10 to 12 buildings, a replica of the old days, of the old buildings, the old furo, the community bathhouse, the outside toilets, the outside wash rooms, and hopefully we have an Inari shrine that we brought from the Moiliili area. We hope to bring that down as part of these structures to be established here by-- what we hope to do is build a building in which the single man used to live in the bungalows, then we hope to have
homes that-- where different ethnic groups used to live, although they lived in different camps in the old days. We hope to establish one building as a camp and that be the Japanese camp and and have either the Japanese society or the clubs to come and decorate the interior. Have the Portuguese do the same, the Filipinos, the Puerto Ricans, and the Koreans, and Okinawans. And we hope to have them get involved with this park. It's all part of the legacy of their heritage and that's what we trying to do. We trying to establish a park here that's going to be one of its kind in the state of Hawaii where we can have a collective idea of all the different nationalities that worked in the plantation. [Voiceover] At times up to 75 percent of these people, disillusioned by the hard labor and harsh regimen of the new life, chose to return to their native land. But in spite of it all, many stayed.
They somehow managed through struggle and hardship to create a better life for themselves and for their children. Their many contributions to the social, cultural, and economic history of these islands enriched the experience of all who live and work here today. [nature sounds] [Male Voiceover] Here comes Dr. doowop and his staff of
six vocal specialists paying a rare house call and doing what they do best. [laughter] [laughter, chatter] [Doo-Wop singing] [Doo-Wop singing] [Doo-Wop singing] Together, these seven guys are known as the Love Notes, and their specialty is doo-wop. And who better to explain than Dr. Doo-Wop himself. [Dr. Doo-Wop (Pete Hernandez)] Doo-Wop music is basically street corner a cappella in the late 1950s, guys would gather together on the corners and try to simulate the sound of music with their voices and what the guys in the background were saying was "Doo-Wop Doo-Wah" which was sort of
simulating the piano and guitar parts in the harmony. [Voiceover] Though their seven part harmonies are under the direction of Felly, it's really a group effort. [Band Member] Wait, wait, we're supposed to be singing one note. [Felix Almestica] Okay yeah, yeah, I'm doing on top of you. Basically with Doo-Wop singing you have the moving bass part at the bottom, the the false tenor which is the highest part in Doo-Wop on top, also moving. Then the second tenor baritone and first tenor doing Doo-Wahs or Shoo-Bee-Doo-Wahs, doing things like that, sounds like that, imitating instruments that kind of maintained a chord of the song, of the music. And in most of the harmony you hear today in the top 40 music you don't have that bass moving. You don't have that false tenor moving
on top anymore. That's what makes us unique. [singing Doo-Wop] [Johnny Bock] Bum-buh-buh-bumm-bum-buh-buh bumm-buh-buh-bumm-bum-buh-buh It constantly moves just like the top end of the song with the middle of the of the group just blowing straight oohs and aahs and between that distinction, those voices are making up the music, taking the place of all the musical instruments. Being the bass singer, I'm playing the bass guitar, but only with my vocals. The guys in the middle will make up the piano and the guitars and all of that. [singing Doo-Wop] [Johnny Loprete] I've been singing on the corner, street corner a capella since I was 14. When I was growing up there were different groups, maybe every 10, 12, 15 blocks
there'd be three guys and then 15 blocks later, it might be four or five guys, and there was a couple of girl groups. And what we do is we travel from neighborhood and, you know, you would have your own little neighborhoods, you know Italian, Irish, Jewish, and we'd go from section to section and I'd go with three or four guys and we'd like a little competitive type of thing. They'd do a song, we'd do a song, and you try to get the people that were hanging out on their corner at the time to like, you know, you'd have a cheerleading section. And the greatest thrill was that if a lot of their people came over to your side, you see? [Voiceover] John Valentine is one of two locals in the Love Notes. His contribution goes beyond choreography. [Dr. Doo-Wop] Doo Wop is unique in the sense that they used the pitch, a deep deep bass voice against a soaring falsetto and you had a crystal tenor lead in the middle.
So we decided "well we have all the elements, we have a moving falsetto, we have John Loprete from New York, who's one of the best falsetto singers of the-- of that type of music." And we felt wow, if we add two local guys with the soprano type of voices on top of the moving Doo-Wop part, we'll have something really unique, something that would be not only commercial here in the islands, but would have a real shot at international success. [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [Loprete] What we're trying to put across to people, what we're trying to sell, so to speak, is memories. Doo-Wop, the music of the middle '50s to middle late '60s are memories. It's one of the few types of music around now where people know exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, when certain songs came out.
[singing Doo-Wop ("My Girl")] [Dr. Doo-Wop] When the harmony hits and it rings, there's no great feeling. It's like your whole body is vibrating and you're a part of something that requires nothing. I mean no musical instruments, just a bunch of guys, and you hit those notes and they ring like bells, you know. It's just the feeling of elation. [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop]
[singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop]
[singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop]
Hey guys, let's sing some a capella. Let's take it back to the street corner. [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop]
[singing Doo-Wop] [singing Doo-Wop] Spectrum was funded in part by grants from the people of Chevron in Hawaii and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. [Pause, bars and tone] The following program is a production of KHET in Honolulu, Hawaii
Public Television. The following program has been funded in part by grants from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the people of Chevron in Hawaii. [Voiceover] Today on Spectrum Hawaii, Simeon Den and Marie Takezawa share with us their world of dance. Also a visit with master furniture maker Wayne Jacintho on the garden island of Kaua'i. But first, a venture to the rugged east slope of Mauna Loa's Puna district on the Big Island to explore with artist Raymond Pelton, Stephen Lange, and Avi Kiriety the recently untapped world of fluid lava sculpture. A Russki pursuit and in a highly
experimental phase of development, the use of hot molten lava as a medium for creative art currently attracts a rare breed of artist and adventurer. [Stephen Lange] This is an extremely harsh environment. And you start getting out into it because of maybe a tremendous curiosity and a tremendous desire to do something that unusual. But it grows on you and you find yourself becoming passionate about the situation, the environment, the materials. Ray spoke very highly one time and it touched me very deeply, because I recognized it so completely, about coming out and doing absolutely anything with the moving lava. Picking it up, changing it, and setting it down. Looking at it. And he felt like it was really, you know, it's a time to really feel that you've had an interaction with the earth. It's an interaction with the earth and you can become as passionate about that as somebody doing bonsai or somebody doing painting or any other form of art.
This seems to me to be even more engaging, it's not a passive relationship which you have out here. It's got to be a very active one. The passion grows and you just get more and more caught up in it. [Raymond Pelton] Every time we go out to the lava, it's always, there's always the unexpected, trees falling or a flow heading at you real fast and having to dodge out of the way with the equipment. But it's our interaction with this that makes it sort of more than just art. It's sort of a dance, you know, it's all motion, every time we go. Slow cooling of the lava is the most important thing. If it doesn't cool very slow, it's like glass, it just fractures. It has fracture lines all through it. And it's useless. So as you can see all around in the lava field, it's all cracked because of the fast cooling. If you cool it too fast you lose 'em. You could have it in 20 minutes, but if you take 24 you have a better chance of having a whole piece. This
material in here is perlite, it's expanded lava. Even though it's white, it's very light and it acts as an insulation and a cushion for these pieces while they're cooling. The wooden boxes are literally an oven, because the hole inside is lined with refractory material. A lot of this is such a learning process. We just have to learn from our mistakes as we go. And maybe one out of three pieces survives. We're trying to learn from our losses. Since the beginning it was just an interaction with the flow and responding to what I saw as an artist deciding what I could do, what I wanted to do. So I sort of made a pact with Pele in an agreement that I would try to respect and proceed in her interest. And so I made Pele- related images, faces. The first face that we did was Pele as a
woman. Madame Pele. The second image out of the concrete mould is Pele the idol mask. And I used the steel mold the first time in November. At that time I had about 40 hours in to hand carving a negative mold directly. And since then, every time that I go out, I see its shortcomings and I re-grind. I've been out maybe a dozen times with it and I have about 200 hours in that negative grinding down. And now we develop the hair. And all sorts of little touches that just add to it. And now it's starting to get to the point where I feel it's a mature face. And the other mold has been a very painful process of learning how to mold with materials that can handle a 2,000 degree shock. And this is a refractory used in boilers and kilns and it holds up against that shock and doesn't break the first time you use it. So developing the technology
for a sound piece of lava product in the end is one of my goals, and then achieving the power in the images. Part of the mold came out in this white eye here. I'll try to pop that out. [Voiceover] Israeli-born Avi Kiriety quickly adopted the Hawaiian tradition of appeasing the volcanic goddess Pele before attempting a new sculpture with the molten lava. With the assistance of friends, Avi directs the transferring of material into his plaster molds where the external layers will then take solid form as the hot lava cools down. [shovel sounds]
[shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds]
[shovel sounds] Okay, that's good. [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] Keep it moving. Okay, take it down. [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] Do you want to pull that mold off? Yeah, we'll have to break it though.
[shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [shovel sounds] [Avi Kiriety] This is a four-headed fountain representing evolution somehow. This one here is supposed to be Cain, this is Hebrew letter, this guy represents the modern-day man. Right here is the Buddha, with a Hawaiian head, bringing the connection back here to the volcano to the Hawaiians.
And, of course it'll have to be worked on at home and refined. But the basic is there. I wanted to thank a lot to Mr. Ray Felton over here and Steve Lange who were the first people-- actually I'm sure that the Hawaiian people were doing it. Nothing is new under the sun. The people who turned me on into this form of art. This part over here is going to be their hands, all the way here it's going to be probably chipped off and filed down and filled in. This is red hot inside. And technically this piece is sound because if you seen how I was treating the, poking in with the stick which adds carbon into the lava and iron inside the lava turning into steel. This is a very simple process of turning iron into lava,
adding-- steel, by adding carbon. In that simple way I think this art product is really together. [Felton] So then developing the images and building up every trip is just one little tiny step. And we learn from it, we go back, work all week in the studio, to prepare for maybe a few hours out here again. So out here is a fraction of the actual time we spend in preparing for each trip. [Voiceover] Wayne Jacintho loves the smell, the touch, and the sound of his work. [Jacintho] I was always out in the mountains, amidst the trees. You know, as kids we used to make bows and arrows and slingshots and all kinds of things out of wood. [Voiceover] He tells of the first time he made a table after a long absence from woodworking. [Jacintho] When I started to work the wood, first of all was the texture and then second of all I, think most important, was the
smell. When I first started to cut that wood on the machine, I just got enveloped by this heavenly aroma and I thought oh yeah, I used to like doing this. [Voiceover] About the same time, he read a book by James Krenov, a cabinet maker of the old tradition. He later studied with the master. It was to influence his life and work. [Jacintho] I read his books and got tremendously excited and decided that that was the course for me. Which was going to the machines and getting the heavy work and the drudgery out of the way with the machines, and then coming back to my work bench and using tools such as hand planes, little knives, chisels, and putting the final finishing touches on the piece in a very personal sort of way. When the wood comes out of the planer, the planer is a
rotary machine, and as a result there are little scallops in the surface of the wood. And then you start to plane. And when you plane, you hear the iron of the plane, the cutter, skip over the high spots, just like troughs of waves. First you take off the very tip of the wave and then you take off the next and the next and finally you reach the last little trough and then it's gone. And after that, you start having a very smooth, very slick surface. You listen and you feel, you don't so much see. That's part of it. But mostly you listen and mostly you feel.
[Voiceover] Jacintho crafts boxes and cabinets from the carefully selected woods which he harvests from the forests of Kauai, his native island. [Jacintho] I have control of my wood. I can dry it carefully for a long time. Most of my woods dry for at least three years before I even touch them. I can choose from one part of a log where the wood might be darker. Or from another part where the wood might be lighter. That's all part of composing the piece. You use light and dark, you use sharp and soft, thick and thin. You try to balance all the components in any given piece. You reach a harmonious whole. [Voiceover] When Jacinto found the wood for this box, he knew he had something special. [Jacintho] The box is made of an indigenous Hawaiian wood called olopua.
It's extraordinarily rare. The tree that I found was dead. I cut it down. The wood was sound. I polished the end grain. And using a jeweler's loupe, I counted the rings from the center to the outside, six inches of wood. I counted 240 rings. When I work with that wood to make a fine object, it helps me in a way to realize that when Captain Cook reached Waimea Bay, the tree was already at least 60 years old. There's a tremendous amount of history in that little box. As Mr. Krenov likes to say, you leave your fingerprints on the work. Everybody will handle a plane differently. Everybody will handle a chisel differently.
File, or a knife. And the way they use it shows in their work. [music] [music] [music]
[Simeon Den] So. This is my second one. OK. OK. And. Open, you open too. Go. This is my second one. And switch. One of the main reasons why I chose dance as a career was I knew that I'd be using my body all the time, which meant that I'd always be working.
Don't touch my head. [laughs] [Marie Takazawa] I always loved dance as a child. My mother used to take me to dance class once a week and I always danced, even if I wasn't taking a class, when I wasn't studying or anything, I'd be dancing on the dance floor. [Voiceover] Simeon Den and Marie Takazawa are the other principal partners of the Dance Works Honolulu studio and the Kaimuki Dance Theater. [Den] We do at our studio, we teach ballet, tap, hula, modern, jazz. So we're trying to give a synthesis of that. What's happening today in dance is you cannot-- if you're going to be a professional dancer, you cannot really afford to be one or the other. You really need to be skilled in all of these forms. [Voiceover] Simeon and Marie are Hawaii-born professionals who have worked constantly on the New York stage. [Takazawa] Almost immediately after I moved there I got a job
with the first production company of "King and I". And that's how I met Simeon Den. [Voiceover] Hawaii is now their home once again, but a dancer who returns from a New York experience returns with a professional eye. [Den] The thing about being in Hawaii is that there are, maybe just the lifestyle that we live, there are so many talented people and it probably happens all around the world too, but particularly in Hawaii that I know of, and it's not developed. For instance, when we were in New York and we did the "King and I" on Broadway there were 18 people in the chorus and I think 15 of us were from Hawaii. I mean this is in the chorus alone. And we're all Asian. But that speaks very well for the talent here. That was about 10 years ago. [Voiceover] Hawaii's future of dance talent lies in its children. What could hinder this artistic resource?
[Den] The one, there's so many diversions in Hawaii, the weather, so many things going on outside that they find it very difficult to focus. I didn't really study in Hawaii. I did my training in New York, but I do know that I would have difficulty here as well. All right. [Takazawa] Kids love to dance. You know whatever they see on TV or whatever, you know, that's what they want to start doing. [Voiceover] And dance they will. [music] When a child sees a dance and an impulse springs up, what's to be done? [Den] Something in your life that strikes a chord, maybe someone's-- but in fact someone does need an older person or more experienced person does need to support that. Direct you, someone needs to guide you. [Voiceover] And how can a dance mentor help his students? [Den] Artfully, each life should be lived artfully. And it doesn't have to be dance, you know, I've told all my students who I have been a mentor to, I suppose, is that
it doesn't matter if you dance or not or whatever you do, as long as you do it with some kind of integrity, you do it well, and you enjoy it. And I still hold to that. [music] [Takazawa] You know, I think it was my mother. She always she loved the arts, and she'd take me to any ballets or anything that had to do with dance, movies, or theater. So I was very fortunate and they took me seriously when I said that I wanted to do this as a career. [Voiceover] As did no doubt the parents of these dancers, many of them former students of Simeon and Marie. [music] [music] [music]
[music] [music] [music] [music] [Den] Recently I went to a high school reunion and a friend of mine used to coach basketball told me that he had brought in a dancer and it really helped his team tremendously and they had a good season. I don't know why. I don't know why it is. I think maybe they don't find it-- it's not important enough. I don't know if the university does it. I think they certainly have the opportunities. [music]
[music] You know, dancing is much more studied, much more studied and slow studied, intelligent ways of moving, I suppose. [music] Thing about the body is the body has learned, the body has its own knowledge about the way to do things and how to do things, and your mind-- you can take your mind and teach your body to do certain things and
be comfortable with them. [Voiceover] William Sylow(?) of New York choreographed this number. The music is drawn from the opera "Dido and Aeneas" by English composer Henry Purcell. [Den] Because all you're doing when you're working in class, you're standing in the mirror and for about a half hour to 45 minutes, all you're doing is focusing on centering your body, find your physical center and it takes so much mental effort to do that. That everything, once the physical center is there, everything is-- you're ready to go from any point. [music] [music]
Through. [music] [music] Spectrum was funded in part by grants from the people of Chevron in
Hawaii and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
- Series
- Spectrum Hawaii
- Episode Number
- 509
- Episode Number
- 510
- Episode
- Lava Sculpture Magma Magic, Way Jacintho Kauai Woodscraftsman, Dancing with Simeon and Marie
- Producing Organization
- KHET
- PBS Hawaii
- Contributing Organization
- PBS Hawaii (Honolulu, Hawaii)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip-225-21tdz2fq
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip-225-21tdz2fq).
- Description
- Episode Description
- Episode 509 begins with a group of three Honolulu poets, Joseph Stanton, Tony Qualgliano, and Tony Friedson who recite poetry at an Italian restaurant, teach, and write textbooks about poetry. The second segment is about the Waipahu Cultural Gardens Park located behind the Oahu Sugar Company Mill that shows visitors what life was like as a sugar plantation worker. The final segment is about an acapella singing group called the Love Notes who sing in the doo wopp style. Pete Hernandez explains the style while vocal director, Felix Almestica, explains the different tones in doc wopp. Episode 510 begins with lava sculpture artists, Stephen Lange and Raymond Pelton who talk about the untapped world of lava sculpture and demonstrate how they sculpt lava. The second segment features furniture maker, Wayne Jacintho who shows his production process. The final segment is about Simeon Den and Marie Takazawa, dancers and partners of the Danceworks Honolulu Studio, who talk about the studio and perform.
- Episode Description
- This item is part of the Pacific Islanders section of the AAPI special collection.
- Created Date
- 1987-05-14
- Created Date
- 1987-06-02
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- Music
- History
- Local Communities
- Fine Arts
- Dance
- Rights
- A Production of Hawaii Public Television. Copyright 1987. All rights reserved
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 01:02:22
- Credits
-
-
Producing Organization: KHET
Producing Organization: PBS Hawaii
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
PBS Hawaii (KHET)
Identifier: cpb-aacip-0dbef8786a6 (Filename)
Format: Betacam SX
Generation: Dub
Duration: 01:00:00
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Spectrum Hawaii; Waipahu Garden Park, Do-woppin in Paradise, Poetry and Pasta making language sing ; Lava Sculpture Magma Magic, Way Jacintho Kauai Woodscraftsman, Dancing with Simeon and Marie ,” 1987-05-14, PBS Hawaii, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 25, 2026, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-225-21tdz2fq.
- MLA: “Spectrum Hawaii; Waipahu Garden Park, Do-woppin in Paradise, Poetry and Pasta making language sing ; Lava Sculpture Magma Magic, Way Jacintho Kauai Woodscraftsman, Dancing with Simeon and Marie .” 1987-05-14. PBS Hawaii, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 25, 2026. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-225-21tdz2fq>.
- APA: Spectrum Hawaii; Waipahu Garden Park, Do-woppin in Paradise, Poetry and Pasta making language sing ; Lava Sculpture Magma Magic, Way Jacintho Kauai Woodscraftsman, Dancing with Simeon and Marie . Boston, MA: PBS Hawaii, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-225-21tdz2fq