Last week, I went to a hula show which my hula school’s students performed. My teacher got blocked seats, so students from my class could sit together. My class is gathered from the other hula schools, because the new class started from this Spring. And my class is a mixed class of ladies of all different ages. I thought I could have a nice time. Always my school’s students have good behavior. But not my class. They were chatting all the time. And they laughed when older ladies were dancing. I couldn’t believe it. The people in front of us kept looking at them, but they never noticed. They were talking about who is good or who is bad, pointing their fingers through the whole show. I was so embarrassed. I really wanted to move my seat. Maybe I should walk away from them. I couldn’t enjoy it anyway.
I was shocked at how they can behave so rudely. And it made me think. Why do they always compare to the other people? And if the other people were better than them, they always had to find the reason, such as ‘they are younger’, or ‘they learned hula longer’, or ‘their teacher is better’ or something. I really don’t like it. All the time. Any hula studio, it happens. Any ages. So, every time they want to know people’s ages, how long they learned hula, where they learned. They always pretend they never practice at home. Well, I don’t know why they do that. I wondered are these all Japanese things? Or are they ladies things all over the whole world? Why do they have to decide the order all the time? Or am I just strange? I’m sometimes missing why I learned hula in Japan. Maybe it won’t have any meaning.
Oh, I should say, maybe for other kinds of dancing, younger dancers could perform better than older ladies, but not in the hula world. There are a lot of mature hula dancers and they dance beautifully. And usually younger dancer never copied to dance like them. Because hula dancing is not just dancing, it has the story telling side. And a lot of experience of life, or how they lived in your life, helps telling the stories. And the ladies who they laughed at were all beautiful dancers.
So sad. Is it so bad getting old? Are the wrinkles of the face and body are so ugly? I don’t think so. Everybody lives the same route, to get old. So sad. Outside is so important in this country.