Peacebuilding and the Arts

Artist Spotlight: Peter Rockford Espiritu

By Toni Shapiro-Phim, co-director of Brandeis’ Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts

Peter Rockford Espiritu founded Tau Dance Theater in Honolulu, Hawaii (USA), as a “safe and creative space for ‘Brown Dance’ to thrive and grow equally in traditional and contemporary modes of expression.” Tau is actually a shortened form of Ututau, Espiritu’s middle name. The Samoan name Ututau, literally meaning "ammunition," but according to Espiritu, something akin to “the keeper of the spears and clubs,” is given to just one male member of each generation. He was honored with this designation following the traditional practice of his mother’s family, who is Samoan. With Hawaiian heritage on his father’s side, Espiritu has been, in a sense, “carrying the spears” for Indigenous storytelling on stages throughout the Pacific and, indeed, the world, ever since beginning his study of hula (Hawaiian traditional dance) in the 1970s with the late kumu hula (hula teacher) John Ka'imikaua. In 2022, Espiritu’s work was recognized with three prestigious awards giving him time, space, and funds to further develop his artistic practice as an Indigenous choreographer focused on dance and social justice.

Indigenous Choreographers Creation Lab

Peter Rockford Espiritu was selected to be one of the artists participating in this past July’s Intercultural Indigenous Choreographers Creation Lab at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada. Artists at the Creation Lab have the opportunity to challenge and expand their creative concepts, receiving choreographic mentorship. Each resident choreographer had time with lighting, sound, and costume designers, and with a dramaturg who “encouraged me to sit with myself and explore deep inside how I can find my own way of communicating what I want to without being pressured to ‘make it work,’” Espiritu explains. He continues: “Banff is amazing: Being in the land of the Blackfoot people, there was healing going on. At the very least I felt that it gave me a place to be quiet. The problem is when I’m home I’m being pulled. I have family, I have the dance company. When I choreograph, all the dancers are there waiting. This space allowed me to just say, This is my time.” While there, he worked on the second solo he’s ever created. 

I center Indigenous identities and voices in a dialogue addressing current local issues of urbanization and globalization. Through this process, we can then speak to societal issues that the Indigenous of Hawaii share with the global population. My Indigenous identity is encoded in both the moʻolelo (stories) of our kūpuna (elders/ancestors) and my commitment to them to continue to create and tell our stories for future generations. My Indigenous identity is also encoded in my own work, as are the chants, songs, stories, and dances of my ancestors.

Tau Dance Theatre tells stories through hula, ballet, and western modern dance, and chant, song, and instrumental accompaniment, all expressive forms that Espiritu has studied and performed for decades. He was at the School of American Ballet summer program and then danced with New York Theater Ballet. When he returned to Honolulu, he began performing with the modern company, Dances We Dance, founded by Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin. Betty Jones had been a principal dancer with the famed José Limon Dance Company.

I’m still on that journey to combine them [hula, ballet, modern]. It will be a lifetime journey. But I am actually trying to find my own identity as a modern Hawaiian Pacific Islander. I’m trying to understand how our ancestors expressed themselves. How did they tell stories that meant something to them during their time? I’m sure there were people like me who were kind of mavericks, maybe even looked at as kind of bad boys! But really, without those people, you didn’t have innovation. And respectful innovation, understanding how you comment about what you’re passionate about and what’s going on around you as Native people. Because otherwise you have the foundation of what is established -- what you call tradition. And then you have these contemporary artists that are so abstract -- the connection is very hard to make. I feel like I’m the bridge. I speak to both sides and I straddle that line from the ancient to the contemporary with my work being a direct comment about what’s happening around me, especially concerning urbanization, globalization, and climate change.

Native Launchpad

Peter Rockford Espiritu was named a 2022 Native Launchpad Artist by the Western Dance Alliance, based in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon. This initiative aims to create opportunity and sustainability for Indigenous artists through financial support, strategic promotion, and networking, while also introducing them to arts presenting and management.

My work continues to evolve. In the early work you can more clearly see lines of hula, modern, ballet. And now it’s starting to meld. The only way that’s going to truly happen is through my journey to create my own movement language. Because otherwise it’s always going to be hula, ballet, modern. I don’t even like the words colonization or decolonization. Reindigenization – that’s the word I’m using now. Because I’m finding myself within my Indigenous self. If you keep dwelling in the colonized side, you’re still dwelling in their realm instead of your own realm. You’re still using their words and that’s why I use the word Pōhuli because I want my own word, my own vocabulary, and I want to start from there. I’m going to stumble and fall, and work my way into my own movement vocabulary.

Dance USA/Fellowships to Artist 

Thirty dance artists, including Espiritu, are 2022 recipients of these fellowships that support those who engage in art for constructive social change.

Visionary Pasefika scholar Epeli Hau’ofa declared that the ocean unites all Pacific Island nations. Invoking generations of navigators and voyagers traversing our vast Pacific, he coined the term Oceania, rebuking the divisive colonial labels of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. In the same spirit, the disciplines that have been the inherited pillars of my entire professional life as a modern Indigenous dance creator now must be overturned and reformed into the foundation of a new movement language paradigm. I continue my commitment as a cultural practitioner through hula, ceremony, chant, ritual and creation of new mo’olelo (storytelling in every form). My movement tool is Pōhuli, my evolving style based on hula, ballet, and modern dance. I am creating contemporary chants and dances in the hope that 25,000 years from now they will still be presented, leaving what I hope is an inspired brown dance footprint – a gift -- for future generations. 

Peter Rockford Espiritu is the only Native Hawaiian who founded and is the Artistic Director of a modern dance company in Hawaiʻi. He has served for over a decade as a Commissioner for Culture & The Arts for the City & County of Honolulu. In 2014 he co-directed and choreographed a production with 33 dancers in Fiji, addressing the climate crisis and its local impact. The production toured the Bergen festival in Norway and then, after several performance stops in Europe, to the EU Parliament. A film about the production, and Fiji’s precarity given climate change and global inaction, was shown at COP 21 in Paris and again at COP 23 in Bonn. “All of the Republic of Kiribati might have to relocate because of climate change,” says Espiritu. “People have no idea what they are going through. At the very least I feel that people should be inspired to look at actual impacts on people’s lives. What causes this? It’s the super powers. What can you do to decelerate it? We gave audiences resources related to ways to encourage countries to take action.” He has most recently taught and set work on dancers in Nagoya and Tokyo, Japan, and a Pōhuli workshop in Logan, Utah, USA.