I was so happy to be in the audience for the Sunday performance of Pei-Ling Kao’s naive. The cast and choreography were all so inviting and welcoming and I was thrilled by what unfolded, opening my eyes to an innovative new experience of the same show. I saw naive first on Friday and two days later on Sunday, it was as if I was seeing it all for the very first time again with brand new eyes and ears, and as Honolulu based choreographer Yukie Shiroma states in a comment on naive, Pei-Ling Kao’s collaborative movement work is “like a warm coming home in the middle of an unfamiliar journey.” I agree wholeheartedly.

I snapped my fingers in time, so happy to be invited from my seat to reach another place in a new moment, to dance like a novice in a field of masters, invited to practice a Bach variation to every note moving toward the gliding edge of expressive longing deconstructed and recreated one turn at a time, each step and every sudden reversal a completion of what came before it. And something beyond that. Like Fulfillment. Like Exhilaration. 

As Yukie Shiroma writes in an email to the choreographer and myself about the audience’s Friday evening experience of naive,

“Thank you (Pei-Ling) for compelling us to feel–not think–about what we were watching. So many wonderful moments that teased us into believing one way while planting wonder about what’s around the corner. A great work, Pei-Ling.“

I was there and agree wholeheartedly, and in that Kumu Kahua Theatre home place Pei-Ling enabled intricate whimsical choreography to be smoothly created in the wonderful boundaried-flow of delightful classical music inhabiting contemporary muscles flared out like nostrils of beautiful birds in flight.  

Again and again it happened.

I breathed in and exhaled out too many feelings to count, and the counted beats had a fluid exactness and freedom of well versed improvisation turned with yearning on a naked dime.

Beads of sweat and giant effort spent duly noted. 

Angelic sensuous tactile relief. Ahhs and woos.  

Enough to fill our expectations to the rafters where the lights told us stories, too, with thanks to Kahana Ho for Lighting and to Pei-Ling Kao for ingenuous deconstruction of intuition, rewarding us with transformative amazement every time. And how exciting it was that the music played on as did reflective movement; as the choreographer’s choices kept going, so the Cast demonstrated in their stories what I accepted as ageless – “naive explores how honesty, trust, and uncertainty reframe the performative experience.”(Pei-Ling Kao, Program Note, October 10-12, 2025)

From the starting gate the beginning notes played forth and all the keys set the audience completely at ease and invited us to jangle jingle dangle perform in some exciting moments when right in front of us the conventional 4th wall formalistically melted like heated chocolate flowing suddenly down into lined up faces, ours and theirs connected. Our/their hands drumming on our backs, their/our fingers back and forth strumming, turning, reaching high and low, putting arms all around our true need inside and outside to be touched, comforted, and encouraged to believe that a movement started does not end at all, it plays on over all so brightly, genuinely, full of real discoveries like Bach’s Goldberg Variations in infinite patterns painted on our/their/your swaying bodies moving as one – you/we/they – sensuously rejoicing, imaginary wings set free joining in the performance singing through the lighted air above the floor and through the open wide invisible doors of measured tempos openly understood as beautiful complexities stripped down to naive’s simple truth. It’s in the piano.

Da da da dum da da dee dee hee hee dum da dum da.

And then we’re done once again, and as the choreographer said in the finalé with a whimsical smile, 
“Great. I have notes.”  

And then after notes one more time to the audience,
“Thank you for coming.” 

And seeing we are also thankful, Pei-Ling concluded their/her master class performance piece with how it all started, a spirited welcoming smile and saying,
 “Let’s begin” and then it ends with, “Well, that’s it.”  

And that’s really it.

Gifted fully blossomed artistic genius.
Not naive at all yet seemed so much so and more.
Seeing it is believing. 

-Chaz Hill is a writer singer/songwriter poet/performance artist.

*Yukie Shiroma is co-founder and artistic director of mask physical theatre company Monkey Waterfall and teaches Okinawan dance courses in the Dance Program with the UHM Department of Theatre and Dance.
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Bach to Hand Slap Massage Time Returns (snap)
Opened Windows
Uncurtained Vision* 
(a poem about a performative experience of Pei-Ling Kao’s naive)

A Bach to hand foot drag massage time review
tap tap tapping of
Moving hands
Moving fingers
Moving palms
Moving dancers

Floor to ceiling

Return on cue to pace feet and arms 
Twisted flow out 
reversals pulls turns ahead stroke heads unbound
Feet unburdened carry everything again
turn back to back rap rap rap on
Forward Back

Side to side beckoning simple reckoning

Every flow a thanksgiving
ode on a minuet with minutes to spare

Timing

Giving naive

Pure unending energy

On a dare

Changes changes changes
In the closed dark chambers
Of
compulsive curtains flayed back playing out across
wide open partitioned space
Until the riveted street light is quieted 
Sifted through breaking belonging happening right in front of us;
open hearted waves come crashing a collapse into 
Unfolded embrace approaching backward
Realms of a kiss against a kiss, face pushed toward face

turned away suddenly into
resounding rounding
pounding postmodernist apocalypse
Pulling
Walls up to our chained chins

looking back out over seamless 

Opened windows

Fingers stretching
Feeling pushed notes over flowing
Heels to finger tips up to shoulders then arms
Follow forehead shaping slipping down 

Inverted hands pushing up

Hairy heads bent into beads of sweat

Holding to cheeks then release

Exposed faces pushed & pulled to the sides of walls
fortunate chests heaved forward freeing forgotten breasts and strong asses bared to the world

Falls & rises across the edge of piano highways

once unbroken bones a shimmer shudder shake for goodness sake

Sat down discordant awakening to chords in sweet accord, an argument of smiles

Note to ourselves about creating a variation:
write it on your heart for
There’s no beginning other than that we feel when we start something different, something new, 
it’s something uniquely formed that has

No end to an ending only 

more
notes 🙂

for tonight and notes for tomorrow followed on by notes for the day after the day we know we are their focus forever more

Their there there we are
made to remember Bach

So innocently our actual feet in meters got dragged back
bravely back turning to a

Deconstructing 

Denoument. 

equation of equality

unmasked and free to be*

Fulfilled.

*got to see it to believe it.