Luthier, dance teacher plan Hawaii showcase

BUCKSPORT – Vance Peters went a tiny bit overboard designing sets for Wednesday night’s Hawaiian dance showcase at the Alamo Theatre.

“I built a fiberglass volcano with a smoke machine inside. It’s 6 feet tall,” said Peters, a longtime Hawaiian enthusiast. “I built a thatched hut with wheels, so they can move it around. And I bought a special blue aqua lamp that projects down onto a screen. It’s awesome.”

By day, Peters runs Vance’s Tropical Fish in Bucksport; for the rest of his time, he’s devoted to Hawaiian culture, which includes making guitars out of Hawaiian koa wood and traveling to the islands as much as possible. So it’s only natural that he’d hook up with Mary Beth Hewitt, a hula dance instructor with a studio in Frankfort.

“We both in our way have a huge love of Hawaiian culture, and we got together this year to put on a big event, or in Hawaiian our ‘hoi’ke,'” said Hewitt. “We have someone come and teach us, and then we have a big show. She’ll be the featured artist this time.”

She is K. Leimomi Hoover, leader of Hui Na Kawaiuaili, a New Hampshire dance school. Hoover, along with the seven adults and seven young girls who make up Hewitt’s troupe, Nahaumana O Hawaii, will perform at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Alamo Theatre in downtown Bucksport. Admission is $3 and includes a silk lei, Hawaiian hors d’oeuvres and door prizes.

Peters hopes people will come to the show with an open mind.

“I’ve had people laugh and think that it’s some sort of a hootchie coochie show,” he said. “The costumes aren’t like that. They are really authentic. I was blown better away by how good they are – they’re better than some I’ve seen in Hawaii.”

In addition to building the set pieces for the show, Peters, a wood craftsman, built ‘kala’au’ sticks for the performance out of the koa wood he uses for the guitars he makes.

“What they do is they whack them on the floor during their performance,” said Peters. “They do this beautiful routine using the stick as acoustic accompaniment, and hit the stick on the floor in time with a chant.”

Hewitt is grateful to Peters for providing her troupe with such top-of-the-line equipment.

“Ordinarily, if we had to order them, they’d cost us an arm and a leg,” she said. “But he just made them and gave them to us.”

In gratitude, Hewitt and her dancers gave Peters a little surprise a few weeks ago.

“We just did his 50th birthday party,” she said. “We did a surprise hula show for him. He’s the big chief. We’ve never had a chief before, and now we do.”

For information about Wednesday night’s performance, call 469-6310. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.