Wehiwehi ma Kaiwiʻula
Friday, June 19, 2026
5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Hawaiian Hall Complex
Free with registration
Join Wehiwehi Cohort 2 for an evening of performance, conversation, and creative exchange at Bishop Museum. Featuring Native Hawaiian artists working across dance, music, theater, poetry, and multidisciplinary practice, this public program explores how Indigenous knowledge and emerging technologies are shaping contemporary performance today.
As part of the 2026 Wehiwehi residency, Shangri La presents this artist showcase and panel discussion in historic Hawaiian Hall, featuring six Native Hawaiian artists from across Hawaiʻi and the diaspora. The 2026 Wehiwehi cohort includes Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu, Sean-Joseph Takeo Kahāokalani Choo, Kealoha Ferreira, Nāwāhineokalaʻi Lanzilotti, Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, and Kalia Vandever.
Presented in partnership with the Doris Duke Foundation’s Creative Labor, Creative Conditions initiative, the program invites audiences into conversations about performance, technology, cultural preservation, and the future of Indigenous storytelling. Artists will share excerpts of their work and reflections on collaboration, experimentation, and creative process developed through the Wehiwehi residency at Shangri La.
Wehiwehi is founded and directed by Christopher Kaui Morgan and serves as a creative laboratory for Native Hawaiian contemporary performing artists to build community, develop new work, and explore emerging technologies through an Indigenous lens.
Complimentary food and beverages will be provided.
To stay up to date on Wehiwehi and future public programs, follow @hi_shangrila on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
Kalia Vandever (they/them) is a trombonist and composer living in New York. Praised by AllMusic as “a master musician and composer” and “a singular talent,” Vandever’s approach to the trombone is distinctive, defined by their sonorous tone and lyrical voicing. They lean into the challenges of the instrument and allow patience and melody to guide their process. Vandever’s music has quickly and widely gained traction in the last few years despite the fact that their style has been consistently difficult to pin down, boasting a compositional scope ranging from the palatial modern jazz of their quartet work (notably featuring guitarist Mary Halvorson) to the synthetic, gauze-like droning ambience of their solo material, their compositional practice draws from their love of both songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener. This dexterity has not gone unnoticed, with The Wire asserting, “Vandever has never sounded more assured and in control of their many strengths.”
Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist / activist / scholar / educator / storyteller born and raised in Pālolo Valley, Hawaiʻi. She is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi, an internationally recognized poet, subject of an award-winning film, This is the Way we Rise, Co-writer of the VR film On the Morning You Wake (To the end of the world), and author of the award winning book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, decolonial, and abolitionist futures of abundance.
Sean-Joseph Takeo Kahāokalani Choo is a mixed, queer Native Hawaiian playwright, performer, and gardener of worlds. He seeks, preserves, and creates stories of the unheard, unseen, and unknown — particularly where queerness, religion, and culture intersect and collide in stories born of and belonging to Hawaiʻi. He is the Lead Steward + Head Jester of Kamamo House, a Honolulu-based queer theater and new work development māla. His practice moves between playwriting, composition, and clowning. His current work includes Kaheananui: Memories of the Dead, a site-specific clown ceremony at Pūowaina exploring land, sovereignty, and the relationship between the living and the dead. An Emmy Award winner and O’Neill finalist, his credits include the One Year Lease International Residency, Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, Shangri La’s 8×8: Source, the Kumu Kahua Theatre premiere of his play Beretania Snapshots, the Native American Artist Lab at The Playwrights Realm, and Creative Lab Hawaiʻi.
Nāwāhineokalaʻi Lanzilotti is a musician, multi-media performer, and director from Mānoa, Oʻahu whose performances and collaborations feature cello, voice, sound objects, electronics, poetry, and movement. Her work explores energy shifting through land, sky, ocean, and the body. Nawahine founded and runs the nonprofit Pulse Oceania. Pulse Oceania is an indigenous performance incubator dedicated to advancing health equity and economic independence in Hawaiʻi through experimental creative practice rooted in aloha ʻāina, focusing on Pacific Island collaboration. To support this work, Nawahine was named a 2024-25 Collective of Health Leadership Institute fellow, supported by the National Collaborative for Health Equity and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Nawahine is a 2026 First Peoples Fund Native Performing Arts Fellow and a 2026 Wehiwehi Fellow.
Kealoha Ferreira is a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese dance artist from Nuʻuanu, Oʻahu, now residing in Mni Sóta Maķoce on the lands of the Daķhóta Oyáte. She is the Artistic Associate of Ananya Dance Theatre and a Co-leader of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance & Social Justice in St Paul. Activated through ADT’s transnational feminist technique, Yorchhā, and a gradual study of Oli and Hula, Kealoha’s artistry and leadership investigate the expansive interstices of relationality while remaining rooted in cultural and kinesthetic rigor. Kealoha is a McKnight Dancer Fellow (2024) and selected artist for St. Paul & Minnesota Foundationʻs Art in This Present Moment Initiative (2025). Her artistry and activism have deepened through opportunities such as Chawrchā NextGen ChoreoLab (2023), Stages of Equity (2023), BIPOC Leadership Circle (2022), Hālau ʻŌhiʻa (2021), Red Eye Theater’s Works in Progress (2020), and now Wehiwehi.
ʻO Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu koʻu inoa. No Moku Honu mai au, a noho ma Oʻahu i kēia manawa. ʻO Kaʻala kuʻu mauna, ʻo Honua kuʻu kahawai, ʻo Awāwamalu a me Makapuʻu kuʻu kahakai. My name is Kaliko – I was raised on Turtle Island; from my father’s side I am Kanaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese, and Portuguese, and from my mother’s side I am Greek and English. I belong to Kaʻala mountain and Honua stream, and I am guided by the sands and waters of Ithanki, Awāwamalu, Makapuʻu, Nānākuli, and Mākua. These are the places that claim me; these are the places that articulate my truths. I work part time in healthcare with MVPFAFF and transgender individuals; and I dance to care for my health and the health of the communities I am part of and who are part of me. I am a student of oli, a kiaʻi ʻāina of many forms.
