Trash Dance
Opala inspiration for Disposable Nation

by Alan D. McNarie

On Hawai'i Island, making 'opala into art is not a new thing; Hilo has hosted an annual Trash Art Show for years. But the Prince Dance troupe-in collaboration with teamed up with the Kahilu Theatre and the North Hawai'i Youth Coalition- is taking the idea a couple of steps further: they're making trash into art and dance and video, in a production called Disposable Nation.
"This is the Kahilu's annual community project," explains Angel Prince, who is directing the multimedia presentation. "They invited me to create a show. I thought something needed to be said about American culture and the environment and our impact on the planet."
The production is a benefit for the North Hawai'i Youth Coalition, which has been involved in a number of local environmental and community development projects, and is currently promoting recycling.
Disposable Nation is only the culmination of a series of projects that the group is doing with Prince's dancers and the theater. The Kahilu presented a free showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a slide show by Susan Middleton about garbage in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The Youth Coalition and the dancers, meanwhile, spent a day cleaning up the "Swimming Pools" beach in North Kohalas. Since plantation days, the slopes behind the Swimming Pools had served as a local dump for everything-including heavy machinery.
"The whole cliff is littered with engines and tires," says Prince. "It's unfortunate, since it's such a gorgeous, gorgeous location, and it's covered with garbage."
She says the two groups hauled out forty bags of refuse, plus "things that wouldn't fit in the bags: big tubes and wires and wheels and engine parts."
Then they embarked on another project: converting some of the opala into art. The result, "a room made out of garbage," is the Kahilu lobby on the nights of the dance concert.
The Disposable Nation performance itself incorporates not only Prince's dancers and choreography, but original videos by local artist Nick Kato and songs by Hualalai, who also narrates the show. Costumes by O'ahu costume designer April Graves.
Prince, who holds a degree in dance and psychology from Hofstra University and who teaches ballet, modern and jazz dancing, incorporated an eclectic mix of dance styles into Disposable Nation. In addition to Hualalai's songs, she and scored the dances with music including native American, old jazz, pop and classical.
"What I was trying to do was show a range of American music, from Native American up to the present," she says.
Prince, who is currently president of the Big Island Dance Council, teaches dance independently and at the Kahilu Theater and Hawai'i Pacific Academy.
Disposable Nation multimedia event
May 5, 7pm / May 6, 2pm;
Kahilu Theater, Waimea.
TIX: adults $20/students $10/under 6, $5.
INFO: 885-6868 or
kahilutheatre.org

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