Did This Just Make Waikiki’s Cirque Show ‘Auana The Most Hawaiian Thing On Stage?

Cirque du Soleil built its first place-and-language show around Hawaii, and just released music entirely in Hawaiian. We saw the show, changed our minds about it once, and are looking at it differently once again.

The question with Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Auana is no longer just whether visitors should spend $86 or more on an 80-minute Waikiki show. It can look like a global entertainment company turning Hawaiian culture into a polished visitor product. It can also look like one of the most ambitious celebrations of Hawaii now playing anywhere in the islands.

The reason we’re looking again is not the show itself. It’s the music. Earlier this month, Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group and BMG released “Kele ka Moana,” a song performed entirely in Hawaiian, with a full soundtrack scheduled to follow in July. That is enough to revisit a question we thought we had already answered.

What we saw on opening night.

We attended opening night of Auana in December 2024, paid for our own tickets, and came away impressed. In our review, “Is Waikiki’s New Cirque Du Soleil Show ‘Auana Worth The Splurge?“, we called it a great celebration of Hawaii.

Part of that reaction stemmed from the project’s ambition. Auana was not another traveling Cirque production dropping into Waikiki for a limited run. It became the first resident Cirque show in Hawaii and the first production in the company’s 42-year history built around a specific place and its language.

The roughly 80-minute show unfolds through eight chapters that blend Cirque acrobatics with hula and Hawaiian stories connected to Maui, Hina, Mamala, Naupaka, voyaging traditions, and other elements of Hawaii’s cultural landscape. These become the framework for the performance, all inside the 784-seat theater at the OUTRIGGER Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel, where it continues to play Wednesday through Sunday.

Why we looked at it differently later.

A few months later, while comparing luaus and other visitor-facing cultural productions, we found ourselves putting Auana in a different category. It was clearly the better production, but we were less sure it belonged in the same conversation as island experiences rooted in community, place, and practice.

That wasn’t meant as a dismissal. It reflected the tension many residents recognize when Native Hawaiian culture is presented in a visitor setting. A production can be skillful, respectful, and emotionally effective while still being designed for a Waikiki audience.

We were asking whether such a highly polished stage production could carry Hawaiian stories in a meaningful way. The new soundtrack gives us a better reason to revisit that question.

What the album changes.

The new soundtrack forces a more complicated conversation. “Kele ka Moana” is performed entirely in Hawaiian. Composer Evan Duffy worked with Native Hawaiian linguist Dr. Keao NeSmith, who consulted on the music. A full soundtrack is expected to be released in July.

“Creating a soundtrack entirely in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi was especially meaningful because the language itself holds such depth, emotion, and connection to place.” (Evan Duffy).

At the same time, the show’s creative foundation was never simply imported from outside Hawaii. Aaron J. Sala is the show’s cultural creative producer, Manaola Yap is costume designer, and Kumu Hula Hiwa Vaughan is choreographer. Neil Dorward is co-creator and director, working with a Native Hawaiian creative team that helped shape how Hawaiian stories, language, hula, and design appear on stage.

A global entertainment company with a worldwide audience is putting Hawaiian-language music on streaming platforms and in the theater night after night, and Native Hawaiian creative leaders helped build the project from the beginning. The language, stories, hula, and design are not extras added for atmosphere; they are part of the show’s core.

That is also what makes Auana different from many visitor productions in Waikiki. Yes, it is polished, commercial, and clearly built for premium ticket buyers, but it is not just empty packaging. It carries real Hawaiian language and stories through a stage production designed to reach a wide audience.

What visitors get for the money.

For most visitors, yes, this is worth it, but not for the reasons a brochure would probably imply. What Cirque does exceptionally well is create emotional scale. Sure, the acrobatics are world-class, and the production values are extraordinary. But it is the Hawaiian storytelling that gives the show a sense of place that many visitor experiences never achieve.

That is also how many other Hawaii residents who saw the show at launch seemed to read it. The reaction was not that Auana reinvented Cirque acrobatics, but that the cultural dimension, the Hawaiian setting, and the intimate Waikiki theater made it feel more worthwhile than a standard Cirque touring spectacle.

At the same time, nobody should mistake it for an evening at a halau or a rich community cultural gathering. Tickets start at $86 and climb to about $232 for front-row seats, with a 30% Kamaaina discount for Hawaii residents. There is also a 20% discount on Aloha Friday for the 8:00 pm performance. The theater sits in the middle of Waikiki. The audience is largely visitors. The entire enterprise exists because tourists buy tickets.

Pretending otherwise would be as misleading as dismissing everything the production does accomplish. What has changed for us is that we no longer think authenticity is necessarily the most useful test. A more interesting question is whether something can be commercial and culturally meaningful at the same time, and Auana comes closer to that unusual middle than we first realized.

The bigger question.

That leaves the traveler with something more useful than deciding whether Auana is “real” or not. Hawaiian language, Hawaiian stories, and Native Hawaiian creative leadership are reaching visitors who might otherwise never encounter them through a show designed to fill seats in Waikiki.

That may be the most honest way to look at it. Auana is a tourist show, a cultural project, and a business all at once. The reason it stays interesting is that none of those fully cancel out the others. Have you seen Auana?

Lead Photo: © Beat of Hawaii at ‘Auana in 2024.