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 ʻAha Hula ʻo Hālauaola, on the islands of Maui, O’ahu, Kaua’i and Hawaiʻi.

Mauliola Cook holds an MFA in Theater and Dance from UH Mānoa. She belongs to Hālau Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima and is a grateful haumana to her Kumu Hula, Victoria Holt Takamine and Jeffery Takamine. She has led the Kaua’i based class of their hālau for the last 22 years. Mauli began her studies of hula in Honolulu in 1978 with the late Rose Joshua. While teaching at UH Hilo Mauliola was privileged to study with the Hālau o Kekuhi for two years. When earning her MFA she was fortunate to study under Kumu Hula Kaha’i Topolinski as well as Kumu Hula Edward Kalāhiki. Mauliola met Auntie Nona when she first arrived in the islands in 1978. Auntie Nona was a cherished mentor and beloved Auntie to her in all aspects of life and hula. Mauliola was awarded an apprenticeship grant from the Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts in the early 1990s to study hula ki’i with Auntie Nona. Their year of study unfolded into myriad opportunities to perform and teach hula ki’i throughout the islands. Since Auntie’s passing Mauli has been blessed by a rich friendship with Auntie’s hānai daughter Maile Beamer Loo. Together with Maile, Mauliola has enjoyed sharing performances and workshops of hula ki’i, on the continent as well as in Hawai’i, often in collaborations with Kumu Hula Auli’i Mitchell and Kumu Hula Kapono’ai Molitau.

For the past 35 years Mauli has made her home on the beautiful island of Kauaʻi, where she has had the privilege of teaching countless students the joys of creative dance and ʻIke Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Studies). Through her work as a national Teaching Artist with the Kennedy Center she has enjoyed sharing her passion for arts integrated instruction with teachers and students in schools throughout Hawaiʻi and the continental United States.

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 24 years, Ms. Loo-Ching has led HPS’s efforts to build a library hand-in-hand with our native elders, digitally documenting hundreds of hours 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 Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi, Maile perpetuates the Beamer style of hula and the traditions of Auntie Nona through her hālau. 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, and in Aotearoa. She is the Kumu of Hālau Hula ʻo Kahoʻoilina Aloha (The Legacy of Love) of Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi.

Charles Aulii Mitchell was born in 1961 on the island of Oahu. He was raised in the traditions of hula `ōlapa under the tutelage of his mother Kumu Hula Harriet Aana Cash and his grandfather Charles Kahiwahiwa Cash. Both were close companions and students of Joseph Kealiikuikamoku Ilala’ole o Kamaheameha, Samuel Pua Haaheo and Mary Kawena Pukui. Two mele (song) of the hula kiʻi were presented to his grandfather by Kawena Pukui. His grandfather never created hula kiʻi for the mele, therefore it skipped two generations before the Cash tradition of hula kiʻi came to be.

Over four decades ago kumu Aulii was challenged by his mother to research the true story of the hula ki’i. She instilled in him the importance of preserving the cultural traditions, customs, and beliefs associated with this genre of the ancient hula. Today, he continues the living traditions of this knowledge to the indigenous communities at home and the world at large.

Kumu Aulii pursued his bachelor’s degree at the University of Hawaii, Hilo in anthropology followed by a master’s degree in Applied Indigenous Knowledge in Tāmaki Makarau, New Zealand, the only one in the United States to hold this degree. He waka hiringa (The Desired Canoe) continues to thrive between Hawaiʻi and New Zealand. He is a distinguished worldwide lecturer, educator, keynote speaker, author, artist, coordinator, producer and kumu hula of both Hālau ʻo Kahiwahiwa on the islands of Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu, and their sister hula institution in Aotearoa, Hālau O Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. A lifelong practitioner, he continues to share and present the traditions of the Hula Ki’i and all things Hawaiian.

Kumu Aulii is a recipient of the First Nations, Henry Luce Foundation Fellowship 2021 acknowledged for his past, present, and future work in the realms of the ancient dance of the Hula Kiʻi, the dance of the sacred image or Hawaiian Puppetry. 

John-Mario Arcilla Sevilla, from Maui, is profoundly grateful to his ʻohana and teachers for the gift of dance. He is a haumana hula of Hōkūlani Holt, June Ka‘ililani Tanoue, and Kawika Alfiche. His Philippine folk dance mentors are Hana Gomez Trinidad, Agrifina Cabebe and H. Wayne Mendoza. His modern dance teachers are Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin. Currently the Director of Development and Operations at Luna Dance & Creativity in Berkeley, CA, he previously was the Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Asia Pacific American Institute and directed 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Dance Education Laboratory and NYC Ballet Education. His choreography has been presented at CounterPulse, The Atlantic Theater Company, 92NY, The Met Museum, LaMaMa, Movement Research, Harkness Dance Center, Dance Theatre Workshop, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, The Asia Society and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance. He has danced in the Modern Dance companies of Pilobolus, Alison Chase, Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais, Anna Sokolow, among others.

Māhealani Uchiyama is an award-winning dancer, musician, composer, choreographer, recording artist, author and teacher. She studied hula under Kumu Hula Hoʻoulu Cambra and primarily under Kumu Hula Joseph Kamohaʻi Kahāʻulelio. She is the founder and director of the Māhea Uchiyama Center for International Dance (MUCID) of Berkeley, California and is Kumu Hula of Hālau Ka Ua Tuahine. She is the creator and director of the Kāpili Polynesian Dance & Music Workshops. She holds a BA in Dance Ethnology and an MA in Pacific Islands Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi, 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 Haumāna Hula Handbook for Students of Hawaiian Dance, and The Mbira, An African Musical Tradition (both published by North Atlantic Books / Penguin Random House). She has released numerous collections of Hawaiian and Tahitian music. Her CDs “Tatau”  and “Pasifika” are widely used by Polynesian dance organizations worldwide. She has two recordings of mbira, the spiritual music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, “Ndoro dze Madzinza” and “The Sky That Covers Us All”. Her CD “A Walk by the Sea” was awarded a Hawai’i Music Award for Best World Music Album.

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 (for which she is also former Co-Artistic Director) and the Tahiti Fete of San Jose and Hilo. 

She is currently using her unique perspective as a lineally recognized Kumu Hula and one of (possibly the only) Kumu Hula of African descent to inform her next recording project, Pōpoloheno: Songs of Resilience and Joy – The Untold Stories of Africans in Post-Contact Hawaiian History, supported by grants from the Gerbode Foundation and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.