Becoming an “Ethnic Dancer” : The Korean Traditional Dancer Halla Huhm and the Multi-culturalism in Hawaiʻi

IR Web Site

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • Becoming an "Ethnic Dancer" : The Korean Traditional Dancer Halla Huhm and the Multi-culturalism in Hawai'i

Search this article

Abstract

application/pdf

This paper focuses on a Korean traditional dancer in postwar Hawaiʻi, Halla Pai Huhm, who played a significant role in establishing Korean dance on the Islands. By tracing her route of travel that started in Korea and Japan under the era of Imperialism, this paper first shed light on her earlier career as a revue dancer: She was trained as a performer who can dance, sing and perform western dances as well as Korean dances, and she was one of the members at her auntʼs Hai Kameko Performance Group, who held an exclusive contract with the leading Japanese entertainment company in 1930s. She acquired her skills to perform modern dance, tap dance and acrobatics, to jazz music, as well as the Korean traditional and dances and folk songs on the stage from the leading professional dancers in Japan and Korea. Th¬en, by following her footsteps in Hawaiʻi after her migration in the postwar years, this paper will examine the ways in which she transformed her dance style from “International” to “ethnic”. ¬Then, this paper examines her career as a Korean traditional dancer that developed along with the multiculturalism of Hawaiʻi. In Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian Renaissance and the civil rights movement in the 1970s and 80s produced a cultural revival among native Hawaiians and Asian minority groups and the leaders of the ethnic group promoted the idea of “ethno-culturalism”. It was the idea of the members of the ethnic group to promote and pass the ethnic culture on to the next generations. As a consequence, Korean dance became a “visual symbol” for the Korean community to represent who they are in the Islands, and Halla Huhm became an “ethnic dancer” to represent this culture. Today, Korean dance in Hawaiʻi does not only represent a culture from the other side of the Paci c, but also the ethnic pride of Koreans living in diasporic communities in Hawaiʻi. However, the reasons why her studio has continued for decades even after her death in 1994 also lies in her beliefs that allowed multi-culturalism in her studio. She stressed the importance of learning dance and culture, not asking who they are, where they come from, or how they look to learn dance. This made it possible for both ethnic Koreans and non-ethnic Koreans to practice Korean dance. Today, her studioʼs faculty and students include Koreans, non-Koreans, and mixed-race locals, and the members of the studio are interested in preserving their studioʼs history. ¬They regard their studio as a part of Hawaiian culture: both inseparable from the history of dance in Korea and a unique aspect of Hawaiʻiʼs history, but the members of the studio are particularly interested in how they can preserve and dance these pieces as a part of the multi-cultural dances of Hawaiʻi. Along with the multiculturalism of Hawaiʻi, Halla Huhmʼs transpaci c route of travelling is continuing through dance.

Journal

  • 英語英米文学

    英語英米文学 61 101-121, 2021-02-26

    中央大学英米文学会

Related Projects

See more

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top