Napili’s Keiki Hula Show: A Tuesday Tradition Since 1966
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Ten dollars gets you into the Hale Aloha Pavilion on a Tuesday night: a folding chair, a view of the small stage, and forty-five minutes of kids in kukui leaf leis working through hula their grandparents were taught the same way, in the same room. A few minutes down the road that same week, a five-course dinner with two James Beard-orbit chefs and a wine list curated by four vintners runs $418.70 a seat. Both happen in Napili/Kapalua. Only one of them has run on the same night, in the same room, since 1966.
The Keiki Hula Show is a long-running nonprofit program in West Maui, predating the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival by more than a decade.
The Napili Kai Foundation has staged its Keiki Hula Show every Tuesday evening since 1966, in the Hale Aloha Pavilion at Napili Kai Beach Resort, doors at 5 p.m. and curtain at 5:30. Adult tickets run $10, kids ages 6 to 12 are $5, and anyone staying at the resort gets in free. Kumu Hula Kathy Ralar leads a live band and a rotating group of Maui children through traditional Kahiko, modern Auwana, and a scattering of Tahitian and Samoan pieces, the same format the Foundation has used for six decades.
The Foundation isn't a for-profit venue trying to fill seats. It's a 501(c)(3) that runs on donations and ticket sales, and every dollar that comes in past overhead goes back into scholarships for its graduates and for children of longtime resort employees. Since 2001 that has added up to $268,500 in higher-education awards, including a recent round of $52,000 split among eleven graduates. The organization's founding philosophy, borrowed from original board member and Kumu Hula Auntie Emma Farden Sharpe, still shows up on the group's materials: "Hula should be shared, not judged."
A Tripadvisor reviewer noted that visitors can see hula at the show without paying for a luau buffet.
A short walk from the Pavilion, Kapalua Resort runs on an entirely different clock and budget. The Kapalua Wine & Food Festival marked its 45th year this year, and it remains one of the oldest food and wine festivals in the country. This year's headline dinner, hosted by chefs Bryan and Michael Voltaggio alongside the Ritz-Carlton's own culinary team, was priced at $418.70 per seat, gratuity included. Chef Edgar Ortiz of Taverna, the restaurant on Kapalua's golf course, took home the festival's "Best of the Fest" honor for his Ahi Katsu, a reminder that the resort's own kitchens compete seriously in a field stacked with celebrity names.
The Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua runs its own parallel calendar of ticketed programming. The Maui Songwriters Festival Summer Series brought Kristian Bush and Payton Sullivan to the property on August 21, and the hotel's August Artist in Residence, Sienna Nelson, wraps up her month-long stay at the end of August. The Maui Jazz & Blues Festival takes over the resort August 31 through September 6.
The calendar also includes a free community event. Maui Land & Pineapple Company's Aloha Friday returns to Kapalua on August 28, a free community evening with a local market and live music.
Sea House Restaurant, inside Napili Kai Beach Resort on Napili Bay, has operated for more than 55 years under a string of executive chefs, currently Alex Stanislaw, and has picked up multiple Maui Magazine 'Aipono Awards along the way, including recognitions for Best Happy Hour and Best Breakfast. That's a business with roughly the same tenure as the hula show next door.
Kitchen 5315 at Napili Shores Resort replaced a barbecue restaurant that had occupied the same space before it. Reviewers describe a restaurant still working through its liquor license, running BYOB with no corkage fee in the meantime, and listing hours that shift depending on which source you check, some show 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., others show a 2 p.m. start. Reviewers generally like the food.
For anyone trying to plan an evening around what's real and current in Napili/Kapalua right now, the practical version looks like this:
The hula show is the one constant on that list. Everything else on the resort side rotates by season, by sponsor, by which artist or festival happens to be booked. The Foundation's Tuesday show has been on the calendar since before the Ritz-Carlton existed at Kapalua at all.
That's a useful thing to know if you live here: a nonprofit has been putting kids on a stage every week for sixty years, funded ten dollars at a time, while the restaurants and festivals around it have kept changing names, chefs, and price tags.
If you're weighing a move to Napili or Kapalua, or you already call this stretch of West Maui home and want a team that tracks these details as closely as they track market data, MacArthur Team Maui would be glad to talk. Call or text the MacArthur Team to start your Maui home search.
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