The daughter of Keoni Fairbanks and Ekela Kaniaupio Crozier of Maui, Fairbanks has been dancing since she was 3. Her mother and both grandmothers danced, too.

She studied with Olana Ai and Chinky Mahoe before, at age 14, joining the Merrie Monarch-winning Ka Pa Hula O Kauanoe O Wa'ahila of the late Auntie Mae Ulalia Loebenstein. She was able to take one class from that legendary kumu hula before Mae Loebenstein's death in 1997, when granddaughter Maelia Loebenstein Carter took over the hula troupe.

Carter had her eye on Fairbanks from the beginning: "She worked hard, but she always had this little light," said the kumu. "With certain dancers, age is just a number. There's just something about them, and I knew she had it."

Said Fairbanks: "Hula is that place where I live — here I can be outside of my body but still in it." A Christian, she said she has sometimes struggled with the god and goddess themes of hula, but she decided to think of them as her ancestors, not beings she was worshipping. Before her dance Thursday night, she prayed that her portrayal would honor God.

Carter, who doesn't compete in Merrie Monarch every year, brought her halau this year to give Fairbanks and her hula sisters a chance to make a journey she herself made. Carter was named Miss Aloha Hula in 1997.

The challenge was finding the right 'oli and mele for Fairbanks.

Carter directs her competitors to research and suggest their own ideas, and Fairbanks, who has a 2005 bachelor's degree in Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawai'i and is a graduate student there now, took on the task with relish.

She knew from the start that she wanted to "bring the honor back to O'ahu," her home island, Fairbanks said.

This is where connections come in. Kumu hula Manu Boyd was chatting casually with Loebenstein one day and asked what Fairbanks planned to dance. She mentioned Kou and Mamala — and Boyd said he'd written a chant about Mamala some years before that he'd be happy to share.

This kind of collegiality and sharing is common in hula, where many kumu are related, either by blood or past dancing ties.

Fairbanks now needed a ka'i, the all-important entry chant. Plugging Kou, a common Hawaiian word, into a search engine in the archives brought thousands of hits. Mamala, too. But when she tried the name of Mamala's shark-god lover, 'Ouha — chicken skin! — there was just one reference, a footnote in an old chant about the goddess Hi'iaka's attraction to Lohi'au, and how they competed in a verbal lovemaking game while visiting Kou.

Poepoe, who recorded the chant, added an aside to the effect that "we know, readers, that Hi'iaka wasn't the first to say these words; the one who said it was the beautiful woman of Kou." At last, Fairbanks had her ka'i: a complex and highly metaphorical piece of poetry in which Mamala plays two lovers off against each other.

Finding her contemporary song was a bit easier, although Fairbanks almost drove her kumu crazy because she pretty much loves every mele ever written.

Loebenstein consulted with another supporter, kumu hula Robert Cazimero, who had been watching Fairbanks dance since she was a child. The two agreed that it should be an older song, one from O'ahu.

When Loebenstein found Johnny K. Almeida's touching love song for his first wife, "'O Ko'u Aloha ia 'Oe," she knew that was it; she remembered the Lim family dancing it once at Merrie Monarch.

Cazimero was traveling and didn't finish the arrangement until last Monday, a day before the halau left O'ahu for Hilo.

Fairbanks slapped it into her iPod, listened to it in the airplane and car, and performed for the first time with the musicians just two days before competition.

Said Loebenstein: "I told her what my grandmother told me in my year: 'You've been dancing long enough to handle this. Make it work. Look smart.' "

And Fairbanks did.