CARNEGIE HALL DOES THE HULA.

"THE HULA IS a living picture book of our culture," insists Honolulu's Sonny Ching of the most powerful form of Hawaiian expression. Not surprisingly then, "Ho'oulu I Ka Na'auoa," or "To Grow in Wisdom," the Carnegie Hall debut of Ching's hula troupe, Halau Hula Na Mamo O Pu'uanahulu, illustrated page after page from the saga of the Hawaiian people.

"The audience was amazed at the size of the cast," Ching said. Using sixty-two performers of all ages, plus some high-tech wizardry, Ching showed the evolution of kahiko (ancient) hula over hundreds of years before its contact with the West, as a visual element that accompanied cycles of chants celebrating gods, chiefs, heroes and the beauty of their pristine islands and waters. The program segued into the dance as shaped by the forces of history: foreign domination, a phase that included its prohibition by the fanatic New England missionaries who correctly recognized it as a threat to their crusade; the reign of King Kalakaua, Hawaii's Merrie Monarch, who rescued the art, by then considerably Europeanized; the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani, which led to annexation and statehood and the near-disappearance of kahiko; exposure to Hollywood and the tourist industry; and, finally, increased ethnic awareness, the context of the Hawaiian renaissance.

Other Hawaiian troupes have performed at Carnegie Hall, and New Yorkers have trudged though at least one blizzard to see them. But Ching's was the first program that was pure hula. Uninterrupted by any musical interlude and unenhanced by any big-name entertainer, it sold 1800 seats (the hall seats 2804), according to Carnegie management, a record for a concert of Hawaiian entertainment. "When the concert was over, the entire hall jumped to its feet and gave us a standing ovation," said Ching. A few days later, another such ovation followed the Washington, D.C., performance in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. The troupe has, in fact, been similarly greeted ever since its first appearance, in 1994, at the Merrie Monarch Festival, a three-day Varna-like competition held in the 7,000-seat Edith Kanaka'ole stadium in Hilo and televised throughout the state.

Formerly an elementary school science teacher, Ching had, to his family's distress, decided just the year before to try to make a living with what he loved best, his hula. After Merrie Monarch TV viewers saw his women dancers take first place in the modern category, second in ancient and best of show in the female division, Ching's enrollment surged from 40 students to more than 250, and it currently stands at 376. "We were totally unprepared for the response," Ching recalled. "I had been teaching hula for eight years before Merrie Monarch and no one knew who we were."

Quantity hasn't hurt the quality of his performances, though. The honors only escalated until, in 1998, his dancers took first place at the festival in every category but one in both men's and women's divisions and scored overall best of show, a phenomenon not seen since Johnny Lum Ho's halau (school) won everything back in the 1980s. Last year, Ching's halau was rated the overall winner and split the rest of the awards with Paleka Mattos's Hula Halau o Kamuela; this year, the two companies traded places, with Mattos's taking best of show. Festival organizers have precluded any future competition from Halau Hula Na Mamo O Pu'uanahulu by making Ching a judge. But fans can still see the group at other venues or hear its kahiko repertoire on the thirty-track CD, also called Ho'oloulu I Ka Na'auao, that hit stores April 4 and spent the next six weeks among the Hawaiian top ten.