Maui Public Art Corps Announces Pop-Up Dance Performance by Karli Jo List Inspired by the Stories of Hāmākuapoko

Maui Public Art Corps, in partnership with the County of Maui, will present a free pop-up dance performance by choreographer Karli Jo List on Saturday, April 4, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. at Lā‘akea Village.

The performance is free and open to the public. Community members are encouraged to RSVP at mauipublicart.org/events. 

The event is part of the partnerships’ Hui Mo‘olelo program, an ongoing initiative that gathers community stories and invites artists to interpret them through public artworks rooted in place. Through this program, community members serve as storytellers, cultural advisors, and collaborators, ensuring that the creative process begins with lived experience and collective memory.

For this project, Kiaʻi Collier, a 2025 Hui Mo‘olelo cohort member, shared family narratives connected to Hāmākuapoko and invited his mother, Pūlama Collier, to participate in the storytelling process. Their reflections became the foundation for List’s choreography.

During an early consultation, Pūlama Collier reflected on the responsibility of interpreting community stories: “This is authentic intelligence… not artificial intelligence. If you keep rendering someone’s story without connecting to its essence, it becomes displaced and disfigured… The closer you stay to the feeling - the field of the story - the more powerful and spirit-imbued it is.”

Kiaʻi Collier emphasized the importance of collaborative interpretation rooted in family values: “Working together - collabing - is the best opportunity for your expression to come out consistent with how we hold our family values and our story.”

For List, the project represents an opportunity to use dance in service of community storytelling. “I’m grateful to Maui Public Art Corps for trusting this proposal and to Kiaʻi and Pūlama for sharing their moʻolelo,” said List. “Part of what I’m growing into as an artist is asking how I can use my craft to be of service. My intention is to create a site-responsive dance work where movement grows out of language, memory, and community voices.”

The project developed through two public engagement activities and five community consultations that helped shape the choreography.

One gathering brought community members to Kaulahao in Hāmākuapoko for a huakaʻi hosted by Mālama Kaulahao with cultural stewards Mike Newbro and Scott Fisher of Hawaii Land Trust. Participants explored the site’s layered history, from its past as a maritime hub where steel cables once unloaded ships, to its role today as a sacred resting place for Hawaiian and Portuguese ancestors and habitat for wildlife such as the burrowing ʻuaʻu kani.

A second phase took the creative process into classrooms at St. Anthony School, where 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students engaged in writing, art, and movement exercises inspired by the Collier ʻohana’s stories. Students reflected on questions about intuition, ancestry, and the practices their families carry forward; insights that helped inform the emotional landscape of the dance.

According to Kelly White, County of Maui public art program lead and Chair of Maui Public Art Corps, the project illustrates a broader understanding of public art.

“Public art is not simply art placed or performed in public space,” White said. “It is art that emerges through public process, shaped by community knowledge, cultural guidance, and shared experiences. Hui Mo‘olelo creates the conditions for those stories to surface so artists like Karli Jo can translate them into new forms.”

The resulting performance invites audiences to experience the stories of Hāmākuapoko through movement, language, and place, demonstrating how public art can be ephemeral, collaborative, and rooted in relationships.