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 their 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
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