History
The center was opened in 1963 as a way to provide employment and scholarships for students at BYU-Hawaii and to preserve the cultures of Polynesia. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s hukilau and luau beach gatherings to earn money to rebuild a local chapel belonging to the LDS Church, which had been destroyed in a fire. "The Hukilau Song," made famous by Alfred Apaka, was written following the composer and song's original singer, Jack Owens's visit to Lāʻie's hukilau.
The PCC is one of the most frequently visited tourist destinations in Hawaii. The PCC is the venue for the annual World Fire Knife Dance Competition, in which contestants display their skill with blazing swords. Since opening its doors in 1963, over 32 million people have visited the center.
Read more about this topic: Polynesian Cultural Center
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“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
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—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)