About Us
About Us
Dance of Lights
L ora’na All! I would first like to introduce myself, my name is Julie Carlson and I live in the SF East Bay Area of California. A little over 45 years ago, when I graduated from high school in Concord California, my grandmother, who traveled to Hawaii by herself just about every year that I can remember growing up, gave me, as a graduation gift, a trip to Hawaii. I will never forget it because she gave me $300.00 and the trip cost $310.00. That was for roundtrip airfare, a 3-Day, 2-night stay at the Gateway Hotel in Waikiki, and two tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center. This trip changed my life forever.
When I saw the Tahitian dancers dancing on the floating stages at the PCC, I was hooked. I remember watching the Tahitian Dancers as they slowly drifted down the peaceful and calm river that made its way through the different villages inside the Polynesian Cultural Center, I told myself, “I want to learn how to dance like that!”
When I got home from my trip to Hawaii, I went directly to my mother and told her that I wanted to sign up for Tahitian Dance lessons.
Since that time, I spent a decent amount of my spare time performing Tahitian dance. I also taught a few classes to groups of young girls that were interested in learning Tahitian Dance. On occasion, I would get a call from a local Polynesian family catering business. The entire family had moved to California from Hawaii and after they settled here in Concord, CA, they started a Polynesian catering business. I actually attended high school with their two daughters. Their catering business quickly became a “hot commodity” and all the big corporations in the area as well as many other big event gatherings would always seek out their catering services as they were the first of their kind in the SF Bay Area that actually provided the full Polynesian experience for their customers.
They would cook a complete Polynesian dinner including digging a huge pit in the ground to bury and then cook the pig. They also prepared and cooked, from scratch, all the standard fixings that went along with a normal Polynesian style meal. When dinner was over, the entertainment began. That is when their 2 daughters and, on occasion, myself, would take to the stage and entertain the crowd.
Back then Tahitian dance skirts, or More’s, only came in 3 colors of Hau, Natural, Red, and Yellow and unless you were located in Hawaii, you were hard pressed to find yellow or red skirts, so you were limited to the natural colored skirts. You added color to your costume by making your tassels out of colored raffia that was sold in your local craft or hobby stores. During those years, 1960s and 1970s, it was difficult to find products to decorate your costume and they didn’t have the Internet to teach you how to make your hip hei. Fortunately, I had always been an exceptional seamstress and crafts person but my vision for unique Tahitian Dance costume was still far off in the future but I knew that one day I would build a costume that would be unlike any of the other costumes that dancers were wearing at the time.
In 1977, I received my Associates of Arts Degree in “Apparel Design and Merchandising” and I always had a strong interest in costume design. I was now completely hooked on Tahitian dancing and over the next 43 years, I began to slowly moved away from the dancing aspect and began to focus my energy more on creating Tahitian dance costumes, not only for myself, but for many others as well. But the entire time that I was involved in the different aspects of Tahitian dancing, I couldn’t quite shake this vision that I had in my head since the very first day that I started dancing, I talked with many dancers over the years and many of them had the same vision as I did, they wanted someone to somehow figure out how to add lights to their costumes. But, sadly, in the 1970s, there just weren’t any products on the market that would enable me to add lights to these costumes.
From that point forward, every 5 or 6 years or so, I would become inspired to try to create this unique costume that I was seeing in my head. In 2017, I went to Bora Bora, Tahiti, and when I returned home from my trip I was inspired to try, once again, to try and create this costume and, unfortunately, one again, I was still unable to find a way of bringing my vision to life. Each time I became inspired, throughout the past 40+ years, I would search the markets trying to find the right products that would enable me to create the costume I had been envisioning in my head. When the Internet became more and more popular, I thought for sure I would be able to find the products I needed but, unfortunately, I failed to find these mystery products, but I knew they were out there somewhere and I just needed to be patient. I wasn't ready to give up . . . at least, not yet.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2021, when I planned a short vacation to Oahu with my sister. She had never been to Hawaii, and although I had taken a number of vacations over on the Islands, she asked if I would like to go with her, and I said, “Sure” and I insisted that we make time to go to some of the more popular shows including the big show at the Polynesian Cultural Center. On day two, my sister was feeling good, so I went to the big Luau show in Paradise Cove put on by Germaine's. My assigned seat was at a table right in front of the stage. When the after-dinner show began, my eyes were sharply focused on the costumes that the dancers wore when they came on stage. I really didn't see anything new, costume-wise I mean, but the dancing was fabulous. On day 3 of our trip, we did go the PCC and we had front row seats to their famous nighttime show called, “HA! The Breath of Life”. As usual, it was a spectacular show. But, I knew I was going to come home with same desire, which was to once again, try to create this vision that had been in my head for the last 45 years. I told myself that if I failed to create this costume yet again, that it would be my last attempt to create this costume design. I would have to put this crazy idea down, and just accept the fact that it could not be done.
When we got back from our trip (August of 2021) I started down the same path I had always taken in the past, and I began searching for the kinds of items that I thought I would need in order to make my dream come true. But, surprisingly, this time, I actually started to see some things that looked very promising. I remember the feeling very well because I started getting butterflies in my stomach. Each day, I would become more and more excited because I was finding the items that I needed and within one month's time I had a prototype in my hands and by the 3rd week in October 2021, I had a wonderful, working product that was not only sturdy but beautiful, as well. I named my Costume Design, “Te Ori O Te Mau Mori” which is “Dance of Lights” in Tahitian. I knew from my research about ancient Tahitians that they believedin something they called Te Lapa. Which means "the flickering Lights" in Tahitian Language. Tahitians and many other Polynesian cultures believed in the magical Te Lapa , the lights that would flicker above the ocean waters as they bravely sailed the currents of the Pacific Ocean in the hopes of discovering new lands and other people. They believed that Te Lapa would guide them safely as they traveled across the huge oceans. I began to think that perhaps ancient Tahitians might have even believed that Te Lapa could help them acheive other goals closer to home. So, I wrote story about this possibility and you can read this story on our webpage entitled, "The Dance of LIghts Story" (coming soon).
Since January of 2022, I have gained a healthy following of of members from 5 or 6 different Polynesian Dance groups that I belong to on Facebook. Within the first five days of opening my store on Etsy, in April 2022, I received 5 inquiries that turned into orders for Dance of Lights costumes from my Facebook fans. (Etsy’s platform is not capable of handling Custom Orders so it was virtually impossible to conduct actual sales transactions using their platform) So, I developed an internal comprehensive order form and when customers would call to place an order, I used this form as an aide to make sure I explained to, my customers, all of the different design elements that were available to them.
There has never been a costume like this in the history of Tahitian Dancing and I felt like my custom-made Dance of Lights costume just might take off. The entire process that is used to create my Dance of Lights costume is virtually identical to the normal way that people have been making Tahitian Dance costumes for years, except that I added two more steps during the construction of the Hip Hei, both steps were added during the process of braiding the Hau together. These two little steps turned this standard costume design into something quite magical. The first step I added, which, to this day, I don’t know why no one else has ever done this before now and that was to create beauitful braiding patterns, which I now offer to all of my customers. There are now more than 30 different braiding patterns that my customers can choose from.
The second thing I added to the costume was a combination of LED and fiber Optic lighting. The reason I added these two items is because I wanted my costume designs to give dancers and dance troupes a very unique opportunity to create new and exciting stories to share with their audiences about the history of the Tahitian Islands. I wanted to give them them the ability to create new and interesting stories about the lives and dreams of the Tahitian people throughout the last 4,000 — 5,000 years. My Tahitian costume design collection, which I have named the, “Dance of Lights” is simply a tool that can be used to expand their out reach into their communities, to draw in bigger audiences and thereby enlighten and educate more people around the world.
Just to add some more exciting news, my first customer happened to be a contestant in the 2022, nationally televised, Miss America’s Miss New Jersey’s Outstanding Teen Pageant. I created a custom-made “Dance of Lights” Deluxe Level Tahitian Dance Costume for her. She was scheduled to perform a Tahitian Dance during the Talent portion of the show and she wanted to wear a “Dance of Lights” costume for her “on-stage” performance. The Miss America Pageant stage crew did something that they had never done before, which was to lower all the lights in the auditorium for the first half of her dance, which definitely caused an uproar when the audience saw her enter onto the stage. This has, indeed, been an exciting time for me. There has not been a moment in time when I did not have an order in the pipeline. I am anticipating that 2023 will be very exciting year for my company and I look forward to hearing from dancers around the globe.
One last comment, if you or anyone you know is interested in learning how to make a Dance of Lights Costume and becoming an authorized Dance of Light costume designer, please reach out to me. I know that, at some point, I will need to start training people on how to make these costumes and this might be the perfect time to do this.
Mauru'uru! Everyone!!