How hula lives, adapts, and stays grounded in Orlando's tourism-driven landscape
For many people in Central Florida, the first hula they ever see comes with an admission ticket: a resort dinner show, a parade, a festival stage. Few places on the mainland offer more chances to encounter Polynesian performance than Orlando. That is exactly what makes it a hard place to find hula with its meaning intact.
Hula has lived here for more than fifty years, longer than most visitors realize, and not only on stages built for spectacle. Its local story runs through resort showrooms and children's classes, competitions and community gatherings. Knowing that story is the best way to tell hula that is present in Orlando from hula that is practiced here.
How Hula Arrived in Central Florida
Hula came to Central Florida with the tourism industry. In 1971, a Hawaiian dance troupe led by Kauʻihealani Mahikoa Brandt was recruited to help open the region's first major theme park resort. Brandt was born on Oʻahu, raised by a grandmother who spoke only Hawaiian, and trained with respected hula teachers before coming east. Most of her troupe never went back, and stayed in Florida for decades.
What happened next is the part of the story most visitors miss. Brandt performed for resort audiences for more than twenty years, and she also founded a hula school for children in Orlando's Polynesian community. In 2003, the state of Florida honored her with a Florida Folk Heritage Award for preserving the tradition by teaching young people. The stage brought hula here. Teaching is what kept it.
Theme Parks and the Shaping of Public Perception
Resort lūʻau shows and theme park performances have shaped what most of Central Florida pictures when it hears the word hula. Those stages have real value. A University of Central Florida study of Polynesian performers in Orlando's tourist lūʻau shows found that many use that work to stay connected to their heritage and to present their culture in ways that matter to them.
The difficulty lies in what audiences bring with them. In Trinity Iwankiw's experience, many guests anchor everything they see to animated films, and those films become the reference point for an entire ocean of cultures. Even some local shows compress the differences between Hawaiian, Tahitian, Samoan, and Māori traditions until the lines blur into a single generic act. The result is familiar to practitioners here: hula that is recognized everywhere and understood almost nowhere.
Presence vs. Practice: Hawaiian Dance in Orlando's Parks
Trinity's own theme park work shows why the distinction matters. For three years, she spun poi balls on a parade float, a skill that is entirely Māori. At a seasonal food festival at another park, the focus was a Tahitian performance alongside a showcase of Polynesian cuisine. At a theme park children's club built around Hawaiian stories, the work lined up naturally with what she always aims to do: separate the Polynesian cultures and define what is specifically Hawaiian.
Each of those was honest work, and she knew exactly which tradition each one belonged to. But they show how easily a visitor could leave a park believing they had seen hula when they had seen something else entirely. Presence is a performer on a stage. Practice is knowing which tradition you are carrying, and saying so.
Beyond Entertainment: Community and Education in Central Florida
Outside the parks, hula in Central Florida has a quieter and older life. In 1998, the State Archives of Florida photographed a hula competition in Orlando organized by the local group Hoike Hawaii, and an Orlando hula competition was still preparing dancers in 2022. That same year, News 6 profiled a Hawaiian-born teacher who has taught hula in Central Florida for more than 30 years and who is frustrated when the dance is mistaken for something sexual rather than a telling of land, sea, and history.
The wider Polynesian community gathers here too. By 2018, the Toa Afi Orlando fire knife competition was in its third year and drawing competitors from across Florida, California, and Hawaiʻi. For Trinity, that community lives in the Polynesian performance companies she works with and the practitioners she performs beside: people who carry the same cultural values and hold one another to them.
What Authentic Hula Looks Like in Orlando Today
Authentic hula in Orlando does not depend on the venue. It can happen at a resort, a school, an HOA clubhouse, or a corporate offsite. What changes is what the performer brings into the room.
Look for a performer who can tell you which island culture each piece comes from, and who will tell your guests, too. Look for someone who explains the songs instead of only performing them. Look for a practitioner who can name their own kumu and stays connected to them. And look for someone who will tell you, kindly and clearly, when what you are asking for belongs to a different tradition, then help you find it anyway.
Why Local Context Matters
Central Florida will always be a place where hula is seen by enormous audiences of visitors. That is not a problem to solve. It is a responsibility to carry. The practitioners who brought hula here in 1971 understood that the stage was only the beginning, and that teaching is what turns presence into practice.
If you are planning an event or a program in Central Florida and want hula grounded in lineage and explained with care, we would be glad to help. If you are still deciding what to look for, our next guide walks through it in detail.
If you are interested in engaging with hula that is educator-led and culturally grounded, we invite you to continue the conversation.
