On stage in their grass skirts and colorful shirts, the hula dancers look like a traditional island group. But when the music starts, it’s obvious this performance is anything but traditional. With their stylized, lively movements, the dance seems closer to Broadway than to the ancient dance developed in Hawaii by the Polynesians. But for those familiar with Patrick Makuakane’s style, it is another opportunity to enjoy his interpretation of hula mua, or progressive hula.

‘The Natives Are Restless’

Kumu Hula (Master) Patrick Makuakane and his innovative form of hula are the subject of a new book, The Natives Are Restless: A San Francisco Dance Master Takes Hula Into The 21st Century, by journalist and writer Constance Hale.

Hale, who was born in Hawaii, but is not ethnically Hawaiian, started dancing hula at the age of 7, and wanted to explore the long history and rich tradition of the art.

She says that to many people, hula is all about pretty girls in traditional costumes waving their arms. But hula is not about movement at all. In its traditional form, she explains, hula is all about poetry and storytelling.

“‘Hula kahiko,’ that means ancient dance, is generally a dance to chant. Hula kahiko also praises gods and goddesses [and] places in the island. Sometimes hula tells love stories, especially native classical love stories.”

The movements in this traditional hula are powerful and angular. Hale says it begins, for example, when the dancer bends at the knees, goes as low to the ground as possible, and then the movements of the legs and the arms are straighter, with angles.  

Modern hula

The dance has evolved over a long period of time. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, hula began to change with the introduction of Western instruments. That’s how the modern hula, or what’s called hula auana, came into existence.

“And, of course, in the 20th century, you have the influence of Hollywood and the tourism industry,” Hale said. “Many more hula songs were written in English and described quite secular subjects. Hula auana is very fluid and graceful and more danced to guitars and ukuleles and Western melodies, as opposed to Hawaiian chants.”

By the mid-20th century, Hawaiian culture was in decline. “Hawaii had been annexed to the U.S,” Hale noted. “There was a great influx of the American culture. And the Hawaiian language had almost become extinct. And many cultural practices were on the way. There was a resurgence in the late 20th century. In 1970s, 1980s, hula was really part of that resurgence.”

Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakane

That’s when Patrick Makuakane was attracted to hula.

“He sort of discovered hula at the age of 13 or 14,” Hale said. “He loved it and was actually dancing professionally in Honolulu as a teenager with one of the famous musicians in Hawaii. He practiced hula in a traditional way, but when he moved to San Francisco and started to participate in the underground club scene, he started to push hula in new directions.”

In The Natives Are Restless, Hale describes this master’s style through the dances he choreographed for his company.

“The hula company is Na Lei Hulu i ka Wekiu. Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakane has invented his new style of hula, which he calls ‘hula mua’.”

Hula mua

Sometimes hula mua dancers dress in hula traditional costumes. Often, they don’t. “For example, it might be a tree leaf skirt,” Hale said. “Then on their head, they might be wearing a garland of ferns or wearing wrist and ankle bracelets of nuts. Those are the traditional costumes. In hula mua, or modern hula, they might be wearing black velvet gowns or colorful street clothes. It always is going to depend on the song.”

Though the hula mua style uses many traditional movements, Makuakane incorporates some very nontraditional choreography.

“For example, in some dances, you’ll see movements that look more like Broadway than like hula. The dancers align themselves in a formation and throw open their arms in a way that’s very Broadway.”

And the music is different. “[It] might be Michael Jackson’s Dangerous, or it might be Madonna’s song, Rain, or it might be an electronic track by a British band. He takes music from all over the word and pairs that with traditional Hawaiian vocabulary.”

Hula narratives

What also separates Makuakane from other hula choreographers is that he’s imagined narrative shows. Hale explained, “He’s choreographed a full-length evening like a one-hour or two-hour show taking on a major theme or a major story, a piece of mythology, or a historical account. ‘Salva Mea,’ one of the dances in the troupe’s Natives Are Restless show, is an example.”

Salva Mea depicts — in a traumatic way and with electronic music — the clash of Christianity and the native Hawaiian culture, when Christian missionaries came to the islands in the 1820s. “He has dancers going across the stage as in ballet, or maybe it looks a little bit like Riverdance, if people are familiar with the Irish clog dance,” she said. “He’s taken some movements from other dance styles, he’s integrated them into some dances.”

Hale says Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakane is not the only native Hawaiian artist who realized that in order to live, hula must change and grow. But he stands out as a pioneer in pushing the boundaries further and exploring what it means to be Hawaiian in the 21st century.
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For his work in films reflecting U.S. history such as “Saving Private Ryan,” “Apollo 13” and “Bridge of Spies,” actor Tom Hanks has won this year’s Records of Achievement Award, the National Archives Foundation said on Monday.

Hanks, 61, will receive the award, given to individuals who bring a broad awareness of U.S. history through their work, at an Oct. 21 event at the National Archives Museum in Washington, the nonprofit organization said in a statement.

“As a dive into archives of almost any kind is, to me, a swim in the finest of waters, I’m dazzled to be a part of this event,” said Hanks, a two-time Oscar winner, who last year was one of 21 people awarded the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest U.S. civilian honor.

“Part of my job has always been one not far from that of a lay-Historian, to understand that I am a part of the documenting of the human condition and the American idea, even in the silliest of stories,” he added in the statement.

Hanks has appeared in numerous films based on historical events and figures, including the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan” and crime thriller “Catch Me If You Can,” based on the true story of fraudster Frank Abagnale.

More recently, Hanks played the title role in “Sully,” based on pilot Chesley Sullenberger’s 2009 emergency landing of a passenger flight on the Hudson River. He was also an executive producer and co-writer/director on the 2001 World War II television miniseries “Band of Brothers.”

“He’s served in World War II [in both the European and Pacific Theaters], negotiated for the U.S. in the Cold War, fought in Vietnam, worked in Congress, and led the space program,” said David Ferriero, archivist of the United States and board member of the National Archives Foundation.

A past winner of the award is Steven Spielberg, who directed Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan,” “Bridge of Spies” and the upcoming Pentagon Papers movie “The Papers.”

Previous recipients also include Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Ron Chernow, Tony award-winning film and theater director Thomas Kail and Tony award-winning “Hamilton” composer, lyricist and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit seeking to force a Madrid museum to return an Impressionist masterpiece to the family of a Jewish woman who was compelled to sell it to a Nazi art appraiser for $360 in 1939 so she could flee Germany.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said two of Lilly Cassirer’s great-grandchildren may sue the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum for the return of Camille Pissarro’s 1897 depiction of a Paris street scene, “Rue Saint-Honoree, Apres-midi, Effet de Pluie.”

Monday’s decision revived a 16-year legal battle that began after the Cassirers learned that the Pissarro, whose value may exceed $40 million, was on display in the Madrid museum, its home since 1992.

Applying Spanish law, the appeals court said it was an open question whether the museum knew the painting was stolen when it acquired it in 1993 in a $338 million purchase of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection.

It said that price was well below the collection’s estimated $1 billion to $2 billion value, and the baron may have known he also got a bargain when he bought the Pissarro from a New York art dealer for $275,000 in 1976.

“The Cassirers have created a triable issue of fact whether [the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection] knew the painting was stolen from Lilly when TBC purchased the painting from the Baron,” Circuit Judge Carlos Bea wrote. “There is a triable issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith.”

Bea also said Lilly Cassirer did not waive her ownership rights when Germany’s government paid her 120,000 marks for the loss of the painting in 1958, when its whereabouts were unknown.

The Pasadena, California-based appeals court returned the case to U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles, who dismissed the lawsuit in June 2015.

“We’re obviously very pleased,” said Stephen Zack, a Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner representing the Cassirers, in a phone interview. “This has been a scar they’ve had to deal with for generations.”

David Boies, a prominent U.S. lawyer, had argued the Cassirers’ appeal.

Thaddeus Stauber, a lawyer for the foundation that runs the museum, wrote in an email that the baron and the museum acquired the Pissarro in good faith.

“We remain confident that the foundation’s ownership of the painting will once again be confirmed,” Stauber said.

Both sides agreed that Lilly Cassirer’s sale of the Pissarro to Berlin art dealer Jackob Scheidwimmer amounted to a forcible taking. Pissarro’s works had been popular among European Jewish collectors.

The case is Cassirer v Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 15-55550, 15-55977, 15-55951.
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They wanted to show the old seven-starred flag from their homeland. And when the Venezuelan players from the Pittsburgh Pirates finally found one on Amazon, they promptly held it upside down.

“When you carry it reversed, that’s a symbol of protest,” Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli said about the display before a game in Arizona in May.

Their rejection of the Venezuelan authorities becomes emboldened with those seven stars, instead of the eight that now appear after one was added by the late President Hugo Chavez’s government.

Amid three months of often-violent confrontations and economic turmoil in their country, an increasing number of Venezuelan players in Major League Baseball are speaking out against the government and showing solidarity with their compatriots protesting in the streets.

“Our country needs help and we want to show that we’re supporting them,” Cervelli said.

Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera, the most famous baseball player from Venezuela, has rejected the violence in videos posted on social media. The two-time American League MVP appeared with other Venezuelan players from the Tigers and the Texas Rangers.

“We want a better country, we want a solution. We want to have someone that steps up and stop this because we cannot continue living like this, killing, and fighting for something not worth,” Cabrera said in Spanish during an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.

One of the gestures of disapproval against President Nicolas Maduro’s government is the use of the upside-down flag, something that started with another wave of protests in 2014.

Cervelli posed with that flag alongside reliever Felipe Rivero, outfielder Jose Osuna and bullpen catcher Heberto Andrade, all from Venezuela. They wanted to make sure that the flag didn’t have the eighth star added by Chavez, so Rivero went shopping online to find that particular emblem.

The almost-daily protests have left at least 90 people dead and hundreds injured. The protests have been fueled by widespread discontent over shortages of basic goods, runaway inflation and allegations that Maduro is undermining democracy in the country.

Venezuela is the second-biggest exporter of foreign players in the majors, behind the Dominican Republic. The 76 Venezuelan players on the 25-man rosters of the 30 MLB teams was a record at the start of the season.

No one has been more vocal than the 31-year-old Cervelli, particularly on his social media accounts. He also has written “SOS Venezuela” in his eye black and has a foundation that ships food, medicine and personal hygiene products to Venezuela.

Cervelli should be enjoying the peak of his MLB career. He signed a $31 million, three-year contract to keep him in Pittsburgh from 2017-19. He has to plans to marry Migbelis Castellanos, a former Miss Venezuela.

But what’s happening daily in Venezuela makes him outraged.

He still has family in the country, but his parents moved to neighboring Colombia “due to the shortages.” His grandparents returned to their native Italy when they couldn’t find the medicine they need.

“It’s not me trying to be a leader, that’s not what’s it all about,” Cervelli said. “Venezuela is a country in shambles. We have to rebuild it from scratch.”

The unrest has also caused players to not want to go back to Venezuela during the offseason. Many are trying to have close family members join them permanently in the United States.

Yangervis Solarte, the San Diego Padres infielder who was widowed last year, brought his mother to live with his three daughters in Florida. But others want to remain in Venezuela, like his father, Gervis, and his uncle, 11-year major leaguer Roger Cedeno.

“I live in the United States, but you never stop worrying with those in the country,” Solarte said. “When you call back home and get all the anguish, that they cannot get this or that. We are tired of this.”

Solarte mentions the struggles of less heralded players, who don’t have the same resources as established stars.

“The ones speaking out are players with million-size contracts,” he said. “But with the rookie ones, it’s different. With or without a big contract, you worry about your family.”

Cervelli hopes to be able to go to Venezuela one day “without the need of bodyguards and armored cars.”

He intends to maintain his activism: “This is not going to stop, is not a fight of just one day. The least I can do is to express that I’m with you and raised my voice because my country need helps. We had the perfect country, but look it a now … it’s a mess.”
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A remote Iranian desert city, Ice Age-era caves in Germany and a stone wharf in Brazil built for arriving African slave ships are three new additions to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites.

The World Heritage Committee spent a week meeting in Kraków, Poland, to consider 34 significant historical and cultural sites to add to the list.

This year’s selections include the Iranian city of Yazd, which UNESCO describes as a “living testimony to the use of limited resources for survival in the desert.”

The city has managed to avoid so-called modernization that destroyed many similar Iranian towns, and has preserved its traditional homes, bazaars, mosques and synagogues.

Another site UNESCO added to the list is in the Swabian Jura in southern Germany, one of the areas in Europe where humans first arrived more than 40,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. They settled in caves, first discovered in the 1860s, and where they created some of the oldest known figurative art.

The U.N. cultural organization said the ancient musical instruments and prehistoric carved figures of animals and humans found in the caves help shed light on the origins of human artistic development

UNESCO also placed the Valongo Wharf in central Rio de Janeiro on the World Heritage List. The stone wharves were built in the early 1800s for slave ships sailing from Africa to Brazil. UNESCO called the wharves “the most important physical trace of the arrival of African slaves on the American continent.”

UNESCO added the World Heritage designation to more than 22 sites during its weeklong meeting in Poland, including choices that were controversial.

They include the Hoh Xil area in the China’s Qinghai province, a traditionally Tibetan area. By designating this a World Heritage site, the International Camnpaign for Tibet, an advocacy group critical of China’s administration there, said UNESCO endorses the forced relocation of Tibetan nomads by Chinese authorities.

China has promised to preserve the traditions and cultural heritage of the Tibetan region.

UNESCO also designated the Old City and Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron as a Palestinian World Heritage Site, angering Israel.

The city is split between Israeli and Palestinian control with the Old City and tomb in the Israeli sector. The tomb is sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Israel accuses UNESCO of trying to hide Jewish ties to Hebron, while Palestinians contend Israel is seeking to undermine their history.

 
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The IOC has balked at helping Rio Olympic organizers pay a debt estimated at $35-40 million.

The executive board of the International Olympic Committee, meeting Sunday in Lausanne, Switzerland, said it had already contributed a “record” $1.53 billion to last year’s Olympics, and questioned giving more after meeting with organizing committee President Carlos Nuzman.

In a statement, the IOC said “more detailed information” was needed and said it “deferred any further consideration at this stage.” It added that it “has closed all its obligations with the organizing committee.”

Contractually, host cities and countries are obligated to pay Olympic debts.

In Rio’s case, if governments step in to help pay creditors, it is sure to anger police, teachers, and other public employees who are getting paid late – caught up in Brazil’s deepest recession in decades.

The IOC, trying to move on to future games including the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in seven months, said in addition to record help for Rio, there had been “an exceptional effort to significant cost savings and additional financial undertakings by all the Olympic stakeholders, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The Rio Olympics opened just under a year ago and were plagued by organizational problems, spotty attendance, corruption scandals, and Brazil’s worst recession in decades. At the last minute, organizers needed millions in a government bailout to hold the Paralympic Games.

Some infrastructure built for the Olympics has found uses – a subway line, a renovated port, and high-speed bus lines. But sporting venues are mostly vacant, a $20 million Olympic golf course is struggling to find players, and fewer than 10 percent of the apartments in the 3,600-unit Athletes Village are reported to have found buyers.

Last month, an AP analysis – supported by city, state and federal data – put the cost of the Olympics at $13.1 billion, a mix of public and private money. However, the exact figure is likely larger and may never be known.
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Deploying poems, paintings and posters, opposition-minded artists in Venezuela are expanding their anti-government protests, offering a peaceful alternative to the violent political unrest costing at least 90 lives in three months.

“We don’t want to confront passers-by but to encourage reflection,” said Teresa Mulet, 46, a designer who joined a recent flash protest in a Caracas boulevard, lying with two dozen people as if dead before jumping up to deliver their message.

At the event, lasting just minutes, some shouted phrases lauding peaceful resistance, while others held letters of the alphabet drawn on cardboard which, when joined, spelled a line from a Venezuelan poem: “Those who kill in reality have not lived.”

Such surprise demonstrations are organized by a group of intellectuals and artistic creators – from historians to film directors – meeting discreetly since May, sometimes in bookshops, to design different strategies of protests to the traditional street marches.

The organizers break into small groups and appear suddenly at opposition marches or public spaces, including some areas dominated by government supporters, to leave messages that later go viral on social networks.

Near-daily opposition rallies have brought chaos to Venezuelan streets since April as protesters demand elections, solutions to an economic crisis and a suspension of leftist President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution.

Many have descended into battles between masked youths and security forces, with thousands of injuries and arrests on top of the fatalities. Maduro says the protesters are seeking a violent coup with U.S. encouragement.

Seeking to create arresting images, artists have sometimes turned to gargantuan projects.

In the Venezuelan capital Caracas’ largest slum, Petare, they recently unfurled a 25-meter- (82-foot-) wide poster made from 3,000 two bolivar currency notes – worth less than $1 at the street rate – to denounce roaring inflation and economic hardship.

Sometimes, peaceful protesters have been holding up signs, like “Ceasefire!” or “No To Violence!,” just meters (yards) from where young men hurl stones and Molotov cocktails against National Guard soldiers using tear gas and water cannons.

At times, the security forces have fired tear gas canisters directly at the peaceful art-themed protest gatherings.

In Barinas, the rural home state of Maduro’s predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez, one painter depicted a pregnant mother with a baby inside her wearing a gas mask – in honor of Venezuela’s new generation of young protesters.

Oscar Olivares, a painter and friend of slain student protester Juan Pernalete, mixes the faces of victims with religious images in his protest-themed designs.

“All of us, with our gifts and talents, can build a better Venezuela,” said Olivares, some of whose images have been featured on the makeshift shields of young demonstrators. “I’m happy to know my art can provide hope and protection.”

The artists, some of whom draw inspiration from Spain’s anti-austerity protesters known as “Indignados” (“The Indignant Ones”), are convinced their methods will be more successful than violent protests.

“We’re trying to reflect what common people feel,” said Mariela Ramirez, 52, an architect.
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Refugees are likely to compete at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with the International Olympic Committee planning another refugee team after its first appearance at last year’s Rio de Janeiro Games.

The IOC unveiled its first team of refugees last year in an effort to raise awareness of the issue and it was one of the feel-good stories of the 2016 Olympics.

The 10-member team from Syria, Congo, Ethiopia and South Sudan hogged the spotlight after marching as the penultimate team before host nation Brazil in the Opening Ceremony at the Olympic stadium.

The athletes took part in athletics, swimming and judo.

“We are already discussing a potential refugee team for Tokyo 2020,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told reporters on Sunday.

“We want to strengthen our efforts with the United Nations.”

Adams said it was too early to talk about size of the team given the complex selection process, with the refugees for Rio being located at camps scattered across the world.

More than a million refugees streamed into Europe in 2016 alone as they fled fighting in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Millions more are housed in camps in countries across the world, having escaped wars or armed conflicts in their home nations.
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With the delicacy of a conductor, Ammar Alobaidi runs his right index finger across his acrylic work — a bright, abstract piece that reflects his love for cubism and three sources of inspiration: Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian and Salvador Dalí.

“The paintings and the colors look like music,” he said. “It has tones.”

His bachelor pad, a modern apartment overlooking a turquoise pool, near the upscale Galleria complex in Houston, Texas, doubles as his art studio and personal gallery. The space is sparse but immaculate. Original canvases occupy every wall.

Alobaidi, 48, feels completely at home here, calling Houston his “mother city,” even though he is originally from Baghdad, Iraq.

“I’m a local artist, not a refugee anymore,” he said. “This feeling gives me more power to create more beautiful things.”

Watch: Ammar Alobaidi, Immigrant and Artist, Calls Houston Home Now

Formerly an established nuclear engineer, Alobaidi resettled in the United States nearly four years ago after a life divided between Iraq, Jordan and Libya. In Houston, home to the country’s largest resettled refugee community, he made a living as a case manager with YMCA International Services’ refugee cash assistance program, in part to give back to the community that afforded him “the opportunity to develop,” but also to fund his passion.

“A lot of professional artists come here as refugees or as immigrants,” said Joe Saceric, director of Community Relations at YMCA International Services. “Whereas they might have been a well-respected professional artist in their country of origin, now they’re having to start from scratch.”

‘I am limitless’

Texas withdrew from the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program in 2016, citing security concerns. But in Houston, the YMCA has continued to provide resettlement and legal support, in more than 20 languages, to clients representing roughly 92 countries, Saceric said.

YMCA International Services noticed the range of talent within its own refugee and immigrant community, including Alobaidi, and hosted an art exhibit and silent auction in 2016 — the first of its kind — called “Triumph of the Human Spirit.”

Tina Aldebashi, a 29-year-old featured immigrant artist from Yemen and outreach worker at YMCA International Services, recalled her move to Houston as a moment of self-discovery.

“The girl who came two years ago to Houston is not the same girl sitting here and talking today,” she told VOA.

“I just wanted to explore — I’ve always wanted to explore since I was a child — but I was limited to the resources I had, or the places I could go to explore,” Aldebashi said. “When I came here, I just thought, ‘I am limitless.’”

Out of darkness

Aldebashi’s medium of choice is resin, one that interprets her emotions but also “holds colors beautifully.” Apart from a “rebellious” charcoal phase, she admits her life has not been one of extreme hardship. Nonetheless, she has made it her mission to empower refugee women through the creation and sale of artwork, an idea based on her personal upbringing.

“I have seen the women in my family, and how reliant they are on their husbands,” she said. “You are an individual; you should be independent enough to do things for yourself, and not be reliant on somebody to help you.”

Alobaidi’s earlier works, like Aldebashi’s, were occasionally dark. Inside his apartment, he reveals one of fallen, dismembered corpses, reflecting the horrors of war. But his newer canvases reveal “strength of love, solidarity,” and “exchanges of generosity,” impressions that he says come as a surprise to some viewers.

“‘Oh, we thought you are a refugee,’” he said. “They thought they will see sadness … they see the opposite.”

Alobaidi, who recently left YMCA to pursue his art full time, claims to paint feelings, not figures — a truth that speaks to his positivity, as he looks ahead.

“I am sure that I will succeed, because [in] this country, when you work hard, you will succeed.” He lights up, like the paintings that surround him. “That is an equation.”
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