On a recent walk, my eyes caught sight of a banner sign near one entrance to Ravenswood Manor Park, a small green space and playground area only blocks from my home.

It was a notice for an informal, FREE, performance by the Hokulea Polynesian Dancers.

Besides weekend farmers markets, the Horner Park Advisory Council sponsors a summer concert series.  Neighbors will bring their kids and blankets and dogs and claim a little square in the patchwork of humanity between the cement path and the stage, a non-gazebo-like wooden structure.

Talk about diversity – I didn’t know we had Polynesians in Albany Park, let alone an academy devoted to island arts and culture.

So, expecting a long, June day where the sunlight extends well into the evening and temperatures that were finally getting warmer, I decided to check it out.

As I walked around the triangle-shaped park, volunteers from the sponsoring organization passed out programs. Essentially an ad book, the local Thai restaurant and high-end wine bar had coupons inserted and dry cleaners, insurance agents, and handymen ran simple business card ads of their own design.

I smiled to myself; a touch of Mayberry on the Northwest side of a city which could boast almost 9 million within its metro area boundaries.

I also laughed because a strange memory came up; a bit performed by a comedy troop I found myself belly-laughing to when I was in my 20s.  On the theme of Polynesian dance and culture,  their schtick went something like this…

…The hula is not an old dance.  We made it up last Thursday.  In it, the hands flail about meaninglessly while the FEET tell the story.  The feet do not speak of old tales and legends, stories of love or triumph, but rather take on assigned topics like What homecoming means to me…

It was hard to take the performance seriously when I had this wonderful memory of over-the-top absurdity in my head, but the overall scene, had its own low-key allure, so I found myself just going with the flow.

I looked around the park.  People were obviously ready for a little vacation in our shared backyard.  Men wore their wildest Hawaiian shirts and even pet pooches were dressed up with straw hats or had a fake flower pinned behind one of their shaggy or short-haired ears.

The host and co-founder of Hokulea introduced individual acts, interspersing explanations of different dances with some promo verbiage on his academy.

The ginger lei sisters, a group of women over 60, did a slow dance, followed by an acrobatic number performed by muscular and bare-chested men, followed by a fire dance of sorts, featuring a young woman, looking like a regular Gaugin island girl fantasy, swinging a set of bell-shaped discs which were aflame.

Music, from Holukea’s play list, blaring from simple speakers, filled the park.  The lyrics sounded strange to everyone, although we all had a pretty good guess what they subjects were.

The songs retold acts of bravery, or romantic and undying love, or the beauty of nature.

In other words, we were all up to listen to the same old story, the same old stories.

I remember a saying about art, although I forget who first forwarded this idea; that art was a personal expression of something that is universal.  The more personal the expression, the more it can touch everyone with its underlying common core.

So, instead of thinking about hearing or seeing the same old story as boring or uneventful, people long to hear the limitless number of interpretations or presentations of things we already know and hold in a deep place inside.

Each new audience breathes new life into the same old story. Sharing our stories build relationships between neighbors and strangers and remind us of what’s most important in our lives.

No, the hula is not an old dance. It is timeless.

Enjoying a local troop of Polynesian dancers in a park on an early summer evening is no small thing.