Note: Program repeated Monday, April 9. Following the film, traditional hula will be performed by four dancers and one musician in the first performance of a mainland tour which will also include the American Film Institute at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. They will be introduced by Vicky Holt Takamine, a kumu hula and co-producer of Kumu Hula: Keepers of a Culture. She is associated with the Ko'iahi o Kaiona Foundation in 'Aiea, Hawai'i. The hula, the dance of the Hawaiian people, has been practiced since Polynesians arrived in the islands around 500 AD. Passed on from generation to generation by kahuna (priests and sages) and by kumu hula (master teachers), the hula also was suppressed by 19th century missionaries and plantation owners, distorted by Hollywood movies and has been exploited by the tourist industry. But the traditional art thrives in the work of modern-day kumu hulas and their halau or dance troupes. Robert Mugge-whose probing music documentaries include films on Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, Al Green, Gil Scott-Heron and others-here explores Hawaiian culture as few outsiders have ever seen it: rich, expressive, colorful, and totally unique. Hula is dance, music and theater in one; a version of oral narrative tradition in which legend is transposed into gesture and movement, it is also an expression of emotion based very much in the moment. One kumu in the film calls hula "the ability to create one's most inner feelings." Rather than treat the broad scope of hula's cultural implications, past and present, Mugge narrows in on some fourteen hula performances filmed at festivals and in exotic locations around the islands. In the film, as in hula, the dance, music and costumes "speak" for themselves.