Hawaiian dancer's 'job' keeps her young, passionate
Gwen Adair Keake'akamai Kennedy knows she doesn't have a job, but a "job" - a passion that also pays, the good fortune to do what she loves on stages big and small, and the ability to share it with others.
Kennedy loves Hawaiian dancing - and all the grass skirts, drum beats, fiery tricks and swaying hips that come with it. She has since she was a toddler, when the Des Plaines native trained with three Hawaiian teachers in Chicago and started performing at a club called Honolulu Harry's Club Waikiki.
"I've done Hawaiian dancing everywhere," she says, "on a piano, on a plane, on a runway" ... the list goes on.
She's not kidding. The company she and her mother have run for 32 years, The Barefoot Hawaiian Inc., provides hundreds of Hawaiian dance shows each year, even at odd places such as water parks and grocery stores.
A performance coming up Dec. 7 at the Pearl Harbor Memorial Parade could be the proudest of Kennedy's career. Her company has been invited there as the only Hawaiian dance group from the mainland to help commemorate the 74th anniversary of the attack that launched America's involvement in World War II.
"I believe you're led to what you're supposed to do when it's your passion," she said.
The performance will bring her back to the 50th state, where her family hails from the island of Oahu. So when she's not sorting through grass skirts, saying "aloha" to customers in The Barefoot Hawaiian's retail store, managing paychecks for her troupe of 30 professional dancers or teaching hula dancing, she's training for the two dances the group will perform at Pearl Harbor.
With a breezy, hang-loose attitude, Kennedy's approach to life is one of motion. She's especially fond of the movements to the drum beat in Tahitian dancing and the hand gestures of hula dancing, which she's always found more meaningful than ballet. Motion, she says, keeps her young.
"I am the age of none of anybody's business. I don't believe in it. I think it's just a waste of time for people to worry about that," Kennedy said. "When you dance, I guess you don't dwell on that - I think that's the key. Dancers stay younger longer."
• See more from our Labor Day Tribute here.
Labor Day Tribute
White-collar jobs? Hardly. Blue-collar jobs. Nope. More like no-collar jobs. In honor of Labor Day, we look at four unusual jobs suburbanites are making a living with. See more from our Labor Day Tribute <a href="http://search.dailyherald.com/related/?Query=%22Labor+Day+tribute%22&type=article&x=0&y=0">here</a>.