UH Hilo alum Kumu Hula Keliʻi Grothmann: From Hawaiʻi Island to Japan
For his senior project at UH Hilo, Keliʻi Grothmann performed a blend of hula and traditional Japanese theater. It foreshadowed a career fully embracing his dual heritage.
A University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo alumnus with a degree in Hawaiian studies and a love of performing arts has merged his Native Hawaiian and Japanese ancestral traditions into a career that honors dance and language of both cultures.
Kumu Hula Keliʻi Kalaukoa Masao Grothmann, after growing up in a family steeped in hula tradition and then years of dancing and teaching hula on Hawaiʻi Island, now lives in Japan, training instructors for Japanese hālau (school for hula) not only in hula but also in Hawaiian culture. He puts emphasis on Japanese hula teachers learning ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language), believing it’s important for his students to know the meaning of what they’re performing versus just memorizing the choreography.
He says his studies of Japanese language at UH Hilo have made a difference in teaching hula in Japan: he understands both Hawaiian language and Japanese so it makes it easier for him “to teach in ways Japanese students understand.”
- Visit Kumu Grothmann’s hula hālau website.
In tandem with this part of his education and pursuit of a career is Grothmann’s academic discoveries about Noh, a type of classical Japanese dance theater with poetry, costumes, music, drama. He already knew about the art form as a child through stories from his grandmother, but he was first formally introduced to Noh in a UH Hilo class taught by Yoshiko Fukushima, a professor of performance studies and languages who specializes in Asian theatre. In learning more about the traditional dance, Grothmann saw connections between hula and Noh, particularly in the way it is handed down generationally.
“To me, that’s like the old Hawaiian way of hula,” he says.
For his senior project in the Japanese theatre and performance class conducted by Prof. Fukushima, he performed a blend of Noh theater and hula, which became the basis for his current artistic work, a “blending” of his Hawaiian and Japanese roots.
Blending Hawaiian and Japanese heritage
Grothmann’s relationship with dance and theater was seeded before he was even born. “Both my grandparents were hula people,” he says.
His maternal grandparents were taught hula by his great-grandmothers. Born in the 1890s, these women were trained in the “very kapu, sacred way of hula,” says Grothmann, by hula masters who were old enough to have witnessed the conquests of Kamehameha I. “That was one of the influences of my life, a big part of the dance section,” he says.
His connection to his Japanese heritage was also an early influence on his love of the performing arts.
He learned from his paternal grandmother that their family descends from the bushi or warrior class who were once patrons of classical Japanese arts, like Noh theater. The feudal rule of the Tokugawas was already at an end when his great-grandfather became a military officer, but his grandmother remembers her father being filled with a particular nostalgia for that bygone era.
His great-grandfather used to start his day by unsheathing his katana (Japanese sword that was used by samurai) and singing Noh songs to it. “He was singing to the tamashi, the spirit within the sword, kind of connecting his spirit to that sword,” Grothmann explains.
This dual heritage has had a great impact on Kumu Grothmann’s education and his artistic work.
Learning opportunities
Things started to change after graduation from middle school in Kohala on Hawaiʻi Island. After telling his mother he wanted to participate in Merrie Monarch, she arranged for him to learn hula outside their family traditions with Kumu Hula Rae Fonseca. Grothmann eventually performed in Fonseca’s last appearance at Merrie Monarch in 2009.
For his high school education, he also was encouraged by his parents to attend Kamehameha Schools Hawaiʻi, located in Keaʻau on Hawaiʻi Island, where he met devoted teachers who challenged and encouraged him academically.
Kamehameha Schools also nurtured his theatrical talents. He became more interested in theater after a trip to London where he saw the production of The Lion King in London’s West End. “It was the first time I ever watched a full professional production, so [after that] I really got involved in theater at Kamehameha,” he says.
After graduation from Kamehameha Schools, Grothmann’s passion for the performing arts led him to apply to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He was accepted, but dreams of attending a school famous for producing Broadway actors had to be weighed against the reality of the financial crisis of 2008. In the end, he gave up on attending NYU due to high tuition costs and decided to consider local options.
UH Hilo, rigorous and exciting
Grothmann says he chose UH Hilo because of its faculty.
He already knew and loved Jackie Pualani Johnson, then a professor of drama specializing in local drama and literature, now emerita. He also knew and was impressed by the professors at UH Hilo’s Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. “To me they’re kind of like the rock stars of culture and language revitalization,” he says.
He met William “Pila” Wilson, a professor of Hawaiian language at the college, through a “career shadow” day during his junior year at Kamehameha Schools. “This is how I actually made the decision to go to UH Hilo, when I thought back on my time with [Prof. Wilson] I thought, ‘I knew that guy and I like him as a teacher,'” says Grothmann.
At UH Hilo, he found his studies with his Hawaiian language professors to be rigorous and exciting.
He notes the special tie UH Hilo’s Hawaiian language program has to the revered scholar, author, and kumu hula that made the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s possible, Mary Kawena Pukui. He notes she is great grandmother to Pele Harman, a UH Hilo alumna and current director of Native Hawaiian engagement who has decades of experience in Hawaiian immersion education through the university. Grothmann also notes that longtime professors at the college, including Wilson, Larry Kimura, and Kalena Silva, all were Kumu Pukui’s students. “Learning with them felt like directly studying with her,” he says.
While at UH Hilo, Grothmann also connected with his Japanese side. He took a class on Japanese theatre and performance in 2012 with Prof. Fukushima, where he learned about the classical Japanese dance theater called Noh. Remembering the stories of his great-grandfather, this inspired him to study the connection between Noh and Japan’s warrior class. “I got really deeply involved,” he says. “The more I studied about it, the more I saw the connections through hula.”
He says he felt a familiarity in the way Noh is passed down father to son, with Noh actors learning their art through constant repetition over the course of two decades before they debut. “To me, that’s like the old Hawaiian way of hula,” he says.
It was these deepened connections to his dual heritage that led him to his senior project, where he performed a blend of hula and Noh theater, which in turn led to his current artistic work that expresses both his Hawaiian and Japanese ancestry. “That stuck with me even till now,” he says.
From Hawaiʻi Island to Japan
After graduating from UH Hilo in 2013 with his bachelor of arts in Hawaiian studies (he’s the first college graduate on his mother’s side of the family and his immediate family), Kumu Grothmann was then hired to teach hula at his alma mater Kamehameha Schools Hawaiʻi in Keaʻau.
One of his responsibilities was helping to put on the school’s annual hōʻike (Native Hawaiian performance show). He remembers vividly the excitement traveling with students to Scotland when one of these performances, an original Hawaiian opera titled Hāʻupu, qualified for the world-renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016.
After spending several years teaching at Kamehameha Schools, and with a wish to delve deeper into his Japanese heritage, in 2018 Grothmann decided to move to Japan to build a new career.
Today he is kumu hula for a Japanese hālau, training kumu hula not only in hula but in Hawaiian culture and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi as well, where his students know the true meaning of what they’re performing.
A serendipitous encounter
Within a year of arriving in Japan, Kumu Grothmann was reintroduced to Japanese theater through a serendipitous encounter with noh master Noboru Sano as a colleague when Grothmann taught hula for an international dance workshop called World Dance Adventure.
Master Sano holds the title of Important Intangible Cultural Asset of Japan, a prestigious honor for the man whose heritage is steeped in Japanese theater, specifically Noh. Noh has been performed in Japan since the 14th century, and Sano’s Hosho School was once patronized by the Tokugawa Shogun of a couple of hundred years ago when Noh plays were protected as samurai entertainment by the Maeda family, a samurai clan in Kanazawa, Japan.
Sano and Grothmann bonded as fellow dance masters, which led to Sano inviting Grothmann to attend his Noh classes. Grothmann is now a member of Sano’s hōshō-ryū (Noh school) and a shitekata (Noh performer) trainee.
Sano was quick to encourage Grothmann to debut as a Noh actor, setting a date at the end of that year for an informal showing or a shimai. He only had two months to prepare. He remembers that performance as “one of the only times I was ever truly nervous on stage.”
After the performance, he attended an after party where Sano introduced him to other Noh professionals. One well-established actor complimented Grothmann, and asked him how long he’d been in training. Grothmann explained he’d only had two months to prepare, which was met by astonishment by the older actor, who exclaimed, “To perform at that level usually takes five years!”
Receiving this praise helped Grothmann remember why he first came to Japan, to more deeply connect to his Japanese ancestry. This aim has fueled his current artistic venture, combining Noh and hula into one performance. Working with Sano, Grothmann has created a new show called Kulāiwi, Land of the Ancestors, that captures his desire to not only become a “bridge between the cultures of Japan and Hawaiʻi but also between the past and present.”
Kumu Grothmann hopes to bring the show to “many other shores” and is already working on preparing to bring the performance back home to Hawaiʻi. He specifically hopes the show will inspire local Japanese to reconnect with their sacred traditions. For the kumu, both hula and Noh are an integral part of “the dance within.”
Coming full circle and as a first step to returning to Hawaiʻi Island to share his new artistic endeavors, Grothmann recently brought his Noh teacher, Master Sano, to UH Hilo Prof. Fukushima’s classroom where Grothmann studied years ago, to give a talk and demonstration on the classical Japanese dance drama Noh. Sano also gave presentations at the Hilo Woman’s Club and Hilo High School.
“Hōshō School Master Sano Noboru’s visit gave students and faculty face to face experience with a cultural icon of Noh theatre,” says Prof. Fukushima. “This experience was extremely valuable and enjoyable for all attendees and will stay in the memory of students through their careers in Japanese studies. In addition, this event merged Hawaiian culture, brought by Keliʻi Grothmann, my old student in Japanese theatre, with Japanese culture represented by Master Sano, building the two traditions for the benefit of all.”
Story by Sophia Kim-O’Sullivan, a graduate student in library science and information at UH Mānoa.
