Kealoha Ferreira

Kealoha Ferreira is a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese dance artist from Nuʻuanu, Oʻahu, now residing in Mni Sóta Makoce on the unceeded lands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. In 2025, she celebrates her twelfth season with Ananya Dance Theatre: joining as a company artist in 2013 and named Artistic Associate and Co-Leader of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance & Social Justice in 2018. Kealoha’s creativity and leadership activates through ADT’s transnational feminist technique, Yorchhā and a gradual study of Oli and Hula, Hawaiian embodied practices of relationality. Through these forms, she investigates the intersectional and expansive nature 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), and Red Eye Theater’s Works in Progress (2020). Kealoha teaches Yoga as associate faculty in the UMN Theater Arts and Dance Department, and a range of classes at the Shawngrām Institute including, Yoga: Aligning with Land, and Yoga Together- an intergenerational yoga practice.