NEVER FOREVER

Fran Camuso (they/he) is a queer, gender-non conforming dancer and performer currently completing their last year of undergrad at the University of Hawai’i Manoa with a BA in Gender studies and BA in Dance

June Chee has been dancing for over 15 years with experience in musical theater, jazz, hip hop, modern, contemporary, ballroom, and improvisation. She has trained and performed with Velocity Dance Center’s Bridge Project, Arthur Murray Dance Studio, Divino Ritmo Dance, Upside-Down Dance, Spatial Sculptors, and PlayBuilders of Hawaii. June is the treasurer and a current company member of Convergence Dance Theatre. June holds a Master of Business Administration degree and a Master of Arts in Global Leadership and Sustainable Development from Hawaii Pacific University.

Born in Honolulu, Spencer has been training in dance at a young age at Ballet Hawaiʻi. Many Nutcrackers later she discovered her love of modern and other styles of dance at Wesleyan University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Dance. In addition to dancing in Maria Houar's Baby Shampoo, she has also been lucky enough to collaborate recently with Convergence Dance Theatre and IONA Contemporary Dance Theatre. She holds a doctorate in physical therapy and helps people learn to move independently after severe injuries. She enjoys talking about her toddler to anyone who will listen.

Kimberly Loo says let’s walk out of the dance studio a better person than when we walked in. Let the dance studio be a place where we teach consensual touch that is healthy, welcome, and nourishing. Kimberly strives to create an environment in which comfort is prioritized, intimacy and touching another human are normalized, and everyone feels respected within their boundaries and safe enough to experiment with edging away their usual inhibitions. Less living in our heads, more living in our hearts. She founded Honolulu Zouk in 2015 to host socials, technique classes, choreography training, and guest instructors in the genres of Brazilian Zouk, Heels, Contact Improvisation, and Ballet. Kimberly creates several new choreographies every year and loves bringing out the passion in her dancers. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Dance with a Performance and Choreography emphasis, and BAs in Anthropology and English Literature, from Pomona College. Her formal training began on her home island of Kaua’i with Royal Ballet Academy and Drill Team Hawaii. She has won state and national championships in salsa and ballroom dance. She’s danced with Legends in Concert, Sininho Samba, Epica Latin Dance Co, Dancers Unlimited, Showtime Entertainment, Pretty Peacock Productions, Cherry Blossom Cabaret, and Leviathan. Kimberly also enjoys pole dance, aerial arts, soft acrobatics, handstands, and hugs.

Terry Slaughter has a Bachelors in Theatre from Berea College and a Masters in Dance with an emphasis in Performance and Choreography from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Locally, Terry has had the pleasure of performing with several companies including: Iona Contemporary Dance Theatre, Jhalak Dance, Tau Dance Theatre, and Convergence Dance Theatre. Currently, He is the Performing Arts Teacher at SEEQS Public Charter School. He is passionate about integrating Social Justice into Arts education and is a strong advocate for Arts education in K-12 schools.

Maria Teresa Houar is a queer scholar of Indigenous Latinx, Mexican, Portuguese and Haole descent, born and raised in Hawaiʻi on the outer islands of Kauaʻi and Maui. Maria Teresa is a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researching dance performance through intersectional lenses of sexuality, fetish, queerness, disability, militarism, intimacy, and consent culture.

Her dissertation, ”Exotic Bodies, Occupied Territories: Performing Settler Security and BIPOC Precarity in Queer Nightlife and Erotic Entertainment at the Edge of Empire,” is performance-as-research that examines exotic dance, burlesque, and other forms of erotic entertainment as a representation of “settler-erotics,” and why these industries' often exist in proximal relationship to military occupation, histories of nuclear testing, and sites of Indigenous land dispossession.

Maria Teresa is the former head of the Contemporary Division at The Danceworx Performing Arts Academy Mumbai, under the direction of Bollywood choreographer Ashley Lobo (celebrity host of "Dance, India, Dance!"), and while in Mumbai she founded a service and scholarship dance program for the Reality Gives Organization, an NGO that promotes education and empowerment to the people of Dharavi. She is also the choreographer of the short film “Country of Bodies: Bombay in Dance”. Maria Teresa holds an MFA in Dance from Mills College in Oakland, BA Cum Laude in Art History for CSU Chico, and is also the recipient of the American Dance Guild Award for Choreographer-Educators from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. She also organizes “Toast and Jam Festival” in Honolulu, an annual contact dance skills and food-sharing festival where people can build their partnering skills and foster collaborative practice across diverse dance and movement practices.

(Al)yssa Reyes is grateful to work with Maria Teresa Houar in bringing their ideas to the stage. Previous work with Maria Teresa includes Baby Shampoo (2019) and Leviathan (2019). Other stage management credits: It Comes In Threes (2018) UHM LN, Murder at the Victorian Estate (2018) UHM LN, Corpus Interruptus (2019) UHM LN, The Fantasticks (2019) KOA, The Mountaintop (2020) TAG. Directing/AD credits: It's the Grass That Suffers (2019) UHM LN, The Moors (2019) UHM, Ordinary Vampires (2020) UHM LN, The Mission (2021) UHM LN.

Jonah Bobilin is a freelance lighting designer and stage electrician from Oʻahu. Jonah is currently pursuing an undergraduate electrical engineering degree at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He has designed for Mānoa Valley Theatre, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and various other educational instituions on Oʻahu. Jonah has received a two Poʻokela Awards for lighting design.