Friday, February 02, 2007

Waikiki Shopping Plaza Tahitian

Place

Waikiki Shopping Plaza, 3rd Floor to the far right of the elevator behind all the kiosks.

Scheduled Time

12/26/07

12:00-13:00


8/20/07
Temporarily cancelled. Call
808-923-1191 to inquire about advanced hula classes from 12:00-1:00 p.m. daily.

Daily 12:00-Scheduled end time unknown

Actual Start/End Time

11:50-12:27 p.m.

Instructor

Name not specified, attractive woman in her 20’s wearing a thigh length orange hula print dress with a pareau over it.

One of the students mentioned that there are 4 different instructors and that today’s instructor was the only one that speaks Japanese

Cost

FREE

# of Students

13

Procedure

None

Language Spoken

Japanese, basic English (good for you, any questions, one more time)

Student Attire

Up to you, one woman wore a pareau

Student Type

11 Asian visitors, 1 mainland visitor

Many students were either 1st time dancers or returning to learn the rest of the song

All female

Break Time

None, but class seemed to end a little early because some students were too tired

Type of Dance

Tahitian

Hip

6 hip movements learned: including tiare, box, double bump, figure 8. Prior to hip movements, instructor went over feet placement in a “V” shape

Fingers

N/A

Hands

Taught hip movements for 20 minutes then added hands

Facial Expression

Instructor smiled continuously

Error Correction

N/A

Instruments Used to Lead Class

CD of Tahitian beats

Pace

Went over the entire song 2x

Recommended for

Entertainment purposes

Intermediate students or for the first time learner who just wants to experience Tahitian and is not worried about not memorizing the whole song

Materials Offered

N/A

Interesting Side Notes

Rotated lines after every new segment learned

Date Observed

2/2/07

2 comments:

aloha said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
aloha said...

The review for the tahitian class in the Waikiki Shopping Plaza is very accurate.

Even though the flyers say the class is supposed to run from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm. My class barely ran over 40 minutes. The instructor was very attractive as described and smiled continuously.

She gave instructions in Japanese and a few of the non-Japanese speakers were confused. The instructor tried to help them but had difficulty understanding still.

The drum beat was simple and easy to follow along with. Some had difficulty staying on beat even though the instructor counted it out.

She used the correct tahitian terminology for some of the hip movements and some see didn't

For example:

Tahitian- Tairi, fa'arapu, tiare (actually the nu'u)

Non-tahitian- Figure 8, box.

Like the review states, this is for entertain purposes only. It's good for excercise and to learn the basics of tahitian hip movements. Not recommended for serious dancers trying to learn the meaning of Tahitian dances.