Doors at 7:30pm ~ Show at 8pm
As the founder and former artistic director of the Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance, Maheaʻs vision is to provide a place where students of all ages and abilities can take part in culturally enriching dance experiences through traditional training, lectures, demonstrations, performance opportunities and workshops with master teachers.
She is an award-winning dancer, musician, composer, choreographer, recording artist, author and teacher. An advocate for cultural understanding, she is also the 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. She holds a BA in Dance Ethnology and an MA in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi.
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.
Having studied Shona music for close to two decades both locally and in Zimbabwe, her work with the mbira was recognized by the City of Oaklandʻs Cultural Funding Program which in 2015 sponsored her to teach the music and tradition of the mbira to Oakland residents.
In addition to numerous awards for excellence in Hawaiian and Tahitian dance, she is the 2009 recipient of the Aloha Spirit Award and has been presented the 2015 Ke Kanaka Poʻokela (The Person of Distinction) Award by the Berkeley Hawaiian Music Festival. She is also the recipient of the 2018 Arts Enabler Award presented by State of the Arts and 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.