A Santa Barbara Hula Hālau Prepares to Cross the Pacific
Hula Anyone Inc. Launches Fundraising Campaign After Invitation to Perform at Eō e ʻEmalani Festival
Fri Apr 17, 2026 | 11:55am
Hula Anyone with SBOCC| Photo: Courtesy
A few blocks down from Mesa Lane Beach, hula dancers moved barefoot across a red-brick driveway.
In front of a so-called patron-of-the-arts house — a white Spanish-style ranch home where string lights draped from palm trees to patio umbrellas, the air was thick with sea salt and Hawaiian music flowed from a speaker. About 20 dancers stood in two rows, most in Hula Anyone T-shirts washed in faded pinks and turquoise. A few people watched from lounge chairs while the dancers told stories with their hands. The whole scene felt warm, calm, happy — sweet like a coconut.
At the front, Angelita Eller corrected the group’s movements, reminding them where to place their palms and when to follow the line of an arm with their gaze toward the sky.
For many mainland Americans, hula is an exotic dance with coconut bras and cellophane skirts. The image is cliché, and, as anyone at Hula Anyone will tell you, wrong. Across the Pacific, hula means language, culture, and history. It is ancient and sacred, indigenous to Hawaiʻi. Before Western contact, Native Hawaiians did not have a written language; history, spirituality, and knowledge were preserved through oral tradition — through hula.
Hula Anyone in a parade on State Street | Photo: Courtesy
I watched rehearsal from a cushioned lounge chair beside Anthony Longoria, digital manager for Hula Anyone and husband to longtime student Eileen Gamboa Longoria, who has been with the group for more than 15 years. “Hula is basically like a Hawaiian sign language,” he said. “So every movement, every gesture has a story moment.” He described the form as layered — traditional in some moments, adaptive in others. Eller’s choreography, he said, stretches across both. “She has done hula in ASL [American Sign Language].”
A hula group is called a hālau, led by a Kumu Hula (master teacher). This fall, the 805 hālau is headed back to the source.
Santa Barbara’s Hula Anyone, the nonprofit hālau founded 60 years ago, has been invited to perform at the Eō e ʻEmalani i Alakaʻi Festival this November, launching a $75,000 fundraising effort to send a 27-member delegation to Kauaʻi. “We are taking three generations of dancers — from our youngest keiki to our honored kupuna — to return to the source of these traditions,” Longoria said.
Hula Anyone | Photo: Courtesy
The festival honors Queen Emma Kaleleonālani, one of the most revered figures in Hawaiian history. Born Emma Rooke in 1836, she was known for her advocacy in health care and education and for founding what became The Queen’s Medical Center. Grief marked her life early: Her young son died in 1862, and her husband, King Kamehameha IV, died the following year at 29. In 1871, she faced her grief by traveling into the upland forests of Kauaʻi, a journey later commemorated through the festival that now bears her name.
Less than a century after Queen Emma’s journey, Hula Anyone was born on the South Coast.
Its roots stretch back to the late 1960s, when Kumu Hula Mahealani McFarland taught Polynesian dance classes in Santa Barbara. When a family emergency called McFarland back to Oʻahu, she entrusted the classes to Eller, then her student.
Taking over was not automatic. “It was a long journey because I was a student myself,” Eller said.
Over time, that student became the steward of a Santa Barbara institution. She redefined it, naming it Hula Anyone. “I’m using hula as a tool to actually bring people together,” she said. “Doesn’t matter your background, it doesn’t matter your disability. Doesn’t matter what your finances are. You all come to one place, and learn pure joy and connect.”
Eller said the name itself carries that intention. “The acronym H-A in Hawai‘i means ‘being of the same breath,’” she said.
Long before the first issue of the Independent hit the stands, Hula Anyone dancers were already performing in the Courthouse Sunken Gardens. In the decades since, the group has appeared at Old Spanish Days, downtown holiday events, and stages including the Lobero, Granada, Marjorie Luke, and SOhO.
“Angelita has taught three generations,” Longoria said. “She’s had mothers here who have then had kids who, then have had kids that dance here.”
On the driveway, I could visibly see that as teenagers danced alongside older adults. The group was mixed in age, background, and experience.
The hālau’s mission has also kept it deliberately outside the competitive circuit. “A lot of hālau do competitions. This hālau does not,” Longoria said. “It goes against her teachings where she just wants it to be about the dance and about the love.”
Hula Anyone | Photo: Courtesy
Hula Anyone | Photo: Courtesy
Hula Anyone | Photo: Courtesy
Hula Anyone | Photo: Courtesy
Hula Anyone performing at MOXI | Photo: Courtesy
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
Hula Anyone rehearsal | Photo: Ella Heydenfeldt
1 / 12
That does not mean the standards are loose. Eller said the dancers are still expected to hold themselves to a professional level — not against one another, but against their own capacity.
“They’re going to be competing amongst themselves, within themselves, to do the best that they can,” Eller said, when speaking about their dancing at the upcoming Hawai‘i trip. “They all put it together, and they look tight. They look professional.”
Part of the Kauaʻi trip’s appeal, she said, is the chance for dancers to experience other teachers and philosophies firsthand.
“I also bring other master teachers here,” Eller said. “We go to their studios. You have to learn their philosophy. That’s why I call it ‘Anyone’ — so we can embrace all the styles, not just mine.”
That openness extends beyond Hawaiian hula into Tahitian and other Polynesian forms. Eileen described learning the difference between kahiko — grounded, percussive — and the softer, more fluid style of modern hula, alongside Māori and Samoan traditions.
“There are some words like you’re flying,” Eileen said, extending her arms after class. “Love is like this. Every movement of your hands, the way you look, the arm movements … this could be wind,” she added, moving slowly through the gestures.
“We want to bring Santa Barbara to them,” Eller said. “They have never experienced us doing their thing.”
When asked what she values most about dancing, Eileen didn’t hesitate: “It is a good way to move, to feel the mana — the spiritual energy — of everybody else.”
For more information, see hulaanyone.com.