Biography

Māhealani Uchiyama is an award-winning dancer, musician, composer, choreographer, recording artist, author and teacher. An advocate for cultural understanding, she is the founder and Artistic Director of the Māhea Uchiyama Center for International Dance in Berkeley and is Kumu Hula (hula teacher) of Hālau Ka Ua Tuahine. Ms. Uchiyama is also the creator and director of the annual Kāpili Polynesian Dance and Music Workshops. In addition to her hula and Tahitian dance training, she has performed professionally in the genres of Caribbean and North African dance. As Kumu Hula, she has led numerous performance tours to Tahiti, New Zealand and the islands of Hawai’i, and has taught workshops throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. She has been an instructor of Hawaiian Language at Stanford University, contributed a chapter on the hula for the publication Dancing on the Earth and authored the Haumāna Hula Handbook for Students of Hawaiian Dance (published by North Atlantic Books / Penguin Random House.) Her CD A Walk by the Sea was awarded the 2007 Hawai’i Music Award for Best World Music Album. She is also Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. She has been honored by the City of Berkeley with a proclamation declaring January 22, 2019 as Māhealani Uchiyama Day. Her newest release, Pasifika, celebrates communities of the Pacific Ocean and will include original and traditional songs, chants and drumming.