Meet our 2026 cohort and follow along on their journey!
AADF recognizes the importance of supporting our local artists. We believe it is essential to provide a space for early to mid-career AAPI dance artists to not only present work, but also explore their unique identities, collaborate with one another, and engage with the AAPI community in a supportive environment.
Photos; Hana Tobias, JDP Designs, Howie Wong
Residency Projects Coming Up
ChoreoLAB: Merging Influences
ChoreoLAB is a series of dance making workshops held by TILTshift Dance and led by co-organizer Joyce Lien Kushner, where participants experiment and play with various tools used for movement generation, movement manipulation, and phrase making.
This particular ChoreoLAB looks at dance making through the lens of cultural heritage. Participants explore ways to merge cultural influences of their particular heritage with their practiced dance form, which may have no connection to their heritage or to their American identity. The choreographers play with cross-cultural ideas not only within the subject matter of their works, but also with the movements themselves.
ChoreoLAB: Merging Influences is open for anyone to attend. Info & signup HERE.
ChoreoLAB: Merging Influences
Sunday, June 14th @1pm-5pm
BalletCenter Studios
Meet the 2026 Cohort
Hannah Joo - Resident
Hannah 하연 Joo is a second-generation Korean American artist, program builder, and educator based in Tovaangar (traditional Tongva/Gabrielino lands aka Los Angeles). Hannah has performed throughout Southern California, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York with Courtyard Dancers, Agora Dance, Donna Sternberg & Dancers, BrockusRED, Mia Moraru, and Alice Lousen & Co, and they are currently a member of the 고은춤 무용단 Goeun Traditional Korean Dance Company. As a solo artist, Hannah's movement practice explores the transmutation of grieving, mourning, and funeral rituals in the Korean diaspora as a source for resistance, mobilization, and collective liberation.
IG: @h.h_joo
Forest Lee - Resident
Forest Lee (they/them) is a queer dance artist and political organizer, residing on Kumeyaay land. They began their dance education at the age of 3, and danced competitively up to the age of 18, when they signed with Bloc LA Talent Agency. Forest has been fortunate enough to work with music artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and Doechii. Alongside their commercial dance career, Forest strives to use movement art and dance as tools for collective healing, liberation, and investigation of topics such as identity, connection, and the human experience as a whole. They worked with Joyce Lien Kushner for Asian American Dance Festival in 2025, Erik James for Disco Riot in 2025, and most recently have worked with Christopher K Morgan and his company dancers in 2025 for his piece "Native Intelligence/Innate Intelligence." Forest is deeply passionate about teaching and sharing their love of dance as well. They deeply informed by their work as an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and are dedicated to fighting for a world in which all people have the right to live dignified, happy, and healthy lives. Forest views art, especially dance, as an integral component for achieving the world we all deserve.
IG: @_forestlee
Photo: Lindsay Rosenberg Photography
Deanna Magpali - Intern
My name is Deanna Magpali, 24, a Chula Vista local and I am an entry-level dancer with on-and-off experience since 2019. Before graduating from SDSU in 2023, I took workshops and joined several exhibition teams. I most recently have been a member of San Diego’s Sweet Dreams Dance Company under the team Candy Melts, a beginner-intermediate exhibition team for adults. In my professional development, I am actively seeking experience in positions that involve marketing, event coordination, and administrative tasks as my experience and interest to date has been in this work.
IG: @dkrysm_
Vrisika Chauhan - Mentee
Vrisika is a South Asian dancer, choreographer, and current senior at UC San Diego majoring in Dance and Psychology. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, CA, where she trained in Odissi, an Indian classical dance form, from the age of 11. Through her time at UC San Diego, she has choreographed for the Theatre and Dance Department showcases as well as been deeply involved in building the dance community on campus. There, she has also received the opportunity to work with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, Ana Maria Alvarez, Kara Mack, Dr. grace shinhae jun, and Juan Carlos Blanco. Additionally, she works with Art Power at UC San Diego as a Promotions Assistant, where she gets to share her love for the arts through event marketing.
IG: @queenvrisika21 @abhinayavist
Jess Dizon - Mentee
Jess is a collaborative dance-maker based in San Diego, CA. Her research focuses on elevating foundational American club dances to affirm them as fine art, ensuring that the history of these dances is shared and preserved. Through interactive and imaginative movement vocabulary, she uses Whacking as her primary dance language. Jess dances with Culture Shock San Diego, Fundamental, and Whacking SD to improve her craft and perform works infused with joy.
IG: @jessdiz0n
Meet the 2026 Mentors
Christopher Kaui Morgan
Christopher Kaui Morgan (he/him) is a choreographer, performer, educator, facilitator, curator, and arts administrator. Known for advocating for cultural integrity, inclusivity, and diverse representation in the studio, onstage, and in decision making rooms – his Native Hawaiian ancestry and international performance career deeply inform his work. He creates performances blending dance, storytelling, music, and multimedia design to explore identity and culture. His choreography has been presented in 22 countries across five continents with support from Creative Capital, NEFA, Dance/USA, the National Performance Network, and the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
In 2024 he became Artistic Director of Malashock Dance, leading its transformation from a founder-driven to a community-centered mission. In 2025 he founded Wehiwehi, a solidarity and support program for Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) performing artists at the intersection of indigeneity and contemporary performance. He founded Christopher K. Morgan & Artists in 2011, the same year Dance Magazine named him one of six breakout U.S. choreographers. Christopher continues to direct both dance companies while developing a new organizational model that will house all of this work.
Since 2006 Morgan has directed Art Omi: Dance, an international residency in New York where he designed its unique approach to cross-cultural collaboration and peer to peer mentorship. In 2026 he will celebrate 20 years of leading this program with a special alumni celebration.
Morgan previously led the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's programming (2022–23) and served as Executive Artistic Director of Dance Place in Washington, D.C. (2017–21) and has taught at American University, the University of Maryland, and over 25 other institutions. He serves on the boards of the National Performance Network, Western Arts Alliance, San Diego Art Matters, and is a President Biden appointed member of the National Council on the Arts.
Born in Orange County, he lives in San Diego with his husband, opera director Kyle Lang.
PC: Doug McMinimy
"I come to this work in dance and identity as an ongoing way of understanding the cultures I am part of, my community responsibilities, and my place within a continuum of Indigenous presence, contemporary life, and artistic practice. For me, choreography and artistic practice carry lineage and community. The work requires listening and care. It asks for accountability, that I don't always have the capacity to give it. This work is meaningful as it challenges erasure and simplification, insisting that dance informed by our cultural identities lives firmly in the present in ways that evolve, grow, and are unapologetically contemporary. I work to create spaces and processes that honor gathering, reciprocity, and attention, while expanding how dance can hold story. In sharing my work with others, I hope other dance makers feel permission to claim their full selves in the studio, to move beyond inherited limitations, embrace that their identities are not obstacles to the field—but vital sources of strength, innovation, and future-making." - Christopher Kaui Morgan
PC; Brian S. Allard
Dr. grace shinhae jun
Dr. grace shinhae jun is a mother, wife, educator, and mover. She is the daughter of a South Korean immigrant and a North Korean refugee, and the founder of bkSOUL performance company. Her research and artistic practices are grounded in Hip Hop culture and cross cultural collaborations that honor her ancestral lineage.
In 2001, she founded bkSOUL, a performance collective of educators, artists, storytellers, and organizers merging together movement, spoken word poetry, and live music. Their work has been presented in Trolley Dances, WOW Festival, Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Dumbo Arts Festival, San Diego International Fringe Festival, and at Link’s Hall. grace has also choreographed for numerous staged plays, most notably for Will Power's "The Seven" at Occidental College.
Her scholarship includes publications in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Journal, and is the co-editor with MiRi Park for Dance Studies Association’s 2022 Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies “Cyber-Rock: A Virtual Hip Hop Listening Cypher”. She co-organized the 2025 Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference and co-directs the Asian American Dance Festival in San Diego.
grace received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her PhD in Drama and Theatre from UCSD/UCI. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at San Diego City College, where she also serves on the Sankofa Social Justice & Education Conference committee, She is a teaching artist with transcenDANCE Youth Arts and has been a continuing lecturer at UC San Diego, where she was the recipient of the 2022/2023 Barbara and Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award. She is most grateful to her husband Dr. Jesse Mills and their two children who keep her grounded and full of joy.
"As a young child, I had many experiences of being othered and was aware that my cultural upbringing differed from my non-Korean friends. I came to appreciate and celebrated my Korean heritage which influenced my first choreographic works as a new dancemaker in college. Since then I have been invested in sharing my experience as the daughter of Korean immigrants in America. My work is also invested in cross racial and cross cultural collaborations because it reflects my community, my people, and how we build together. As an educator and artist who navigates academic institutions and dance spaces where Asian American identities and other identities are continually invisibilized, I work to serve as a representation of what is possible to young people. I intentionally create spaces to emphasize that who they are and where they come from will always be present as a part of their creative work. I hope to encourage young artists to learn their family stories, their cultural stories, and their stories of arrival to understand their positionality that influences how and what they create." - Dr. grace shinhae jun
PC: JDP Designs
Joyce Lien Kushner
Joyce Lien Kushner is a second generation Taiwanese American dance artist, teacher, and maker, trained in modern, contemporary, ballet and jazz, and certified in Progressing Ballet Technique®. She has trained dancers of all ages, nourishing a philosophy that all bodies dance. She has performed and collaborated with artists throughout California since 1987 – Modern City Repertoire, Strong Pulse Dance, Epiphany Dance Theater, Surhabi Suraf, Sarah Bush Dance, Amy Lewis, Five Feet Dance, and Chris Black Dance. In 2015, she founded TILTshift Dance in San Francisco.
Now back in her hometown of San Diego, Joyce continues her teaching and choreographic practice, while striving to build community among dance artists, uplift their voices, and create opportunities. In 2024, she was awarded an 18-month artist residency by NTC Foundation in ARTS DISTRICT Liberty Station to help further these endeavors. In 2025 under TILTshift Dance, she developed and co-produced AADF, San Diego’s first Asian American Dance Festival - a project born of her deep desire to carve out space for AAPI dance artists to share their stories, in their own voices, on their own bodies.
Joyce currently teaches at Lynch Dance Institute and Malashock Dance, as well as guest teaches throughout San Diego County. She proudly serves on Disco Riot’s board and plays an active role in its continued success.
“I am an American born child of immigrants. Being Asian and being American were two polar identities that I navigated between, depending upon who I was around or what was expected of me. Dance had always sat firmly on the American side. A practitioner of modern and contemporary forms, I was unexpectedly invited to explore my Asian identity through dance making for the first time at the ripe age of 48. Working with other AAPI dance artists on a similar journey, I finally realized what it was like to live and tell my multicultural story through this art form that I’ve held so dear. I uncovered a wholeness that I didn’t know I was missing and a creative well that continues to shape me today as an artist. AADF and this residency program are born from a deep desire to share this journey with others, who like myself may have unconsciously suppressed sides of our identity, trying not to be too much of one or the other, but always feeling never enough. I hope our residents can find validity in their many selves, liberate and celebrate them equally, and ultimately realize wholeness within their dance making bodies.” - Joyce Lien Kushner
PC: Carmen Veronica
Our 2026 Partners & Sponsors
