Māhealani Uchiyama is an award-winning dancer, musician, composer, choreographer, recording artist, author and teacher. She is the founder and director of the Māhea Uchiyama Center for International Dance in Berkeley and is Kumu Hula of Hālau Ka Ua Tuahine. She is the creator and director of the Kāpili Polynesian Dance and Music Workshops. She holds a BA in Dance Ethnology and an MA in Pacific Islands Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi. She has led performance tours to Tahiti, New Zealand and the islands of Hawai’i, and has taught workshops throughout the United States and Mexico. She has taught Hawaiian Language at Stanford University and authored the Haumana Hula Handbook for Students of Hawaiian Dance (published by North Atlantic Books / Penguin Random House). Her CD A Walk by the Sea was awarded a Hawai’i Music Award for Best World Music Album. In addition to awards for excellence in Hawaiian and Tahitian dance, she is the recipient of the Aloha Spirit Award and has been presented the “Ke Kanaka Poʻokela” Award by the Berkeley Hawaiian Music Festival. She has been honored by the City of Berkeley with a proclamation declaring January 22, 2019 as Māhealani Uchiyama Day. Ms. Uchiyama has served on the panel of judges for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and the Tahiti Fete of San Jose and Hilo. She is the former President of the Board of Directors of World Arts West and is now Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

Meridith Kawēkiu Aki was born and raised in Berkeley, CA. She began taking dance classes at the age of 2 years. Throughout her childhood she learned many different styles of dance, including many forms of “world dance”. In 1993 she took her first class from Kumu hula Māhealani Uchiyama and has continued ever since. In 2006 she became an ‘alaka’i of Kumu Māhea’s Hālau Ka Ua Tuahine. With Hālau Ka Ua Tuahine, Kawēkiu has performed throughout California and internationally, appearing in venues ranging from the Hollywood Bowl and Kū Mai Ka Hula of Kahului, Maui, to the Heiva celebrations of Tahiti, French Polynesia and Te Papa Tongareva, the National Museum of New Zealand. She has attended the world conference on hula, Ka Aha Hula o Hālauaola, on the islands of Maui, O’ahu, Kaua’i and Hawaiʻi. Kawēkiu has had the privilege of taking hula workshops with Nā Kumu Hula (hula masters): Keali’i Reichel, Robert Cazimero, Huihui Kanahele-Mossman, Nālani Kanaka’ole, Ke’ano Ka’upu and Lono Padilla, Patrick Makuakāne, Sonny Ching and more.

Mauliola Cook began her study with Nona Beamer (the beloved matriarch of the Beamer family affectionately referred to as “Aunty Nona”) in the early 1980s as she worked with Aunty Nona on her books “Mele Hula Volumes One and Two”. She began teaching and performing Hawaiian Studies, hula, chant, storytelling and crafts on the Island of Kauaʻi. After receiving an SFCA grant to study hula kiʻi with Aunty Nona, Ms. Cook and Aunty Nona toured the islands performing and teaching the hula kiʻi to young and old alike. Mauli also brought the kiʻi experience to the schools and taught hundreds of keiki (children) how to tell stories and dance with the kiʻi. In 2014 Mauli was invited to write, produce and perform in a hula ki’i drama at the LaMama Theater in NYC. After meeting and becoming close friends with Maile Beamer Loo, Mauli and Maile began to teach and perform hula kiʻi togther. They taught workshops at the Halauaola World Hula Conference on Kauaʻi in 2014 and in Hilo in 2018.

Maile Loo-Ching and her hānai (adopted) mother, the late hula master, composer, storyteller, author, and teacher, Auntie Nona Beamer, founded the non-profit Hula Preservation Society (HPS). For the last 20 years, Ms. Loo-Ching has led HPS’s efforts to build a library hand-in-hand with our native elders, digitally documenting hundreds of “talk story” sessions and public programs with the elders sharing of their lives as Native Hawaiians in the dynamic yet challenging 20th century in Hawaiʻi. The resulting archive exists nowhere else in the world and is a resource for teachers and learners of all kinds. In addition to leading the work of HPS from its Office & Archives in Kane‘ohe, Hawai‘i, Maile perpetuates the Beamer style of hula and the traditions of Auntie Nona through her hālau, Kaho‘oilina Aloha. This tradition includes Hula Kiʻi, or Hawaiian Puppetry, which was one of Auntie’s most treasured forms of ancient hula. Auntie Nona’s kiʻi protégé is Mauliola Cook, and together Ms. Loo-Ching and Ms. Cook have taught and shared kiʻi on the islands of Oʻahu, Kauaʻi, Maui, Molokai, and Hawaiʻi. She is the Kumu of Hālau Hula ʻo Kahoʻolina Aloha (The Legacy of Love) of Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi where she teaches children the joys of life and the stories of Hawaiʻi through hula.