TONI PASION (She/Her/They)
Lecturer

Toni M. Temehana Pasion is a cultural artist practitioner of Dance based in Fontana/Hurunga, originally from Los Angeles/Tovangaar, California.

Toni’s formal practices are in Hawaiian hula and Philippine dance. She is a longtime dancer with Kayamanan Ng Lahi Philippine Folk Arts, based in Glendale, California, and continues to train deeply in her practices.

Toni is the owner, director, and main instructor of Aloha Hula Studio in Rancho Cucamonga/Kukamonga, and teaches keiki (kids), ‘ōpio (teenagers), ʻmākua (adults), and kūpuna (elders). AHS offers Hawaiian and Filipino dance and music classes; a dance company; and space for cultural learning, collaboration, and choreographic incubation. Currently in their second year under new ownership, while continuing the legacy of 15 years since its establishment, AHS’s vision is to enrich the local community through the application of the cultural values Aloha (unconditionality), Pono (to do what is right), Kapwa (shared identity), and Galang (respect) through dance as intention-in-motion and decolonial autonomy. AHS produces annual productions in efforts to uplift and promote Hawaiian and Filipino/x arts and stories in the local diaspora.

Toni is a founder of the Kordillera Music Ensemble, and currently under the tutelage of Joel Jacinto, co-founder of Kayamanan Ng Lahi. KME promotes the spirit of Kordillera music and instruments through education and musical application in the Inland Empire.

Toni’s movement work engages with dance as socio-cultural archive, innovation, sensibility cognizance, diaspora expression, and ancestral connection. She is actively engaged in dance research centering the relationships between indigeneity and diaspora, contemporality and tradition, and cultural knowledge and spirituality along with longtime collaborators Tiaki Kerei (NZ), Angela Sebastian (Philippines/Washington), and Mauikānehoalani Lovell (Hawaiʻi). In 2023, Toni was an author-contributor in “Upon Shared Waters”, edited by Noelle Falcis Math and published in collaboration with the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach. “Upon Shared Waters” expresses passages by Pacific artists on ancestral Oceania kinship, and serves as an interactive text for reflecting upon lineage, culture, and ecological relationship.

Toni attained her undergraduate degrees at the University of California, Riverside in Asian American Studies and Gender & Sexualities Studies, and her MA in Dance (Culture and Performance Studies) from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She also studied abroad at the University of Auckland, and there danced/trained with Hālau Moananuiakiwa and Ura Tabu. Toni is shaped by choreography and performance training with Global Motions World Dance Company of Santa Monica College, iMoving Lab (Hawaiʻi), Tevakanui (Las Vegas), Halau Hula O ʻImi ʻIke (Culver City), Hālau Kealiʻi O Nālani (Torrance), and many groups and artists of past and present.

At UCR, Toni teaches Pedagogy, Oceania Dance, Asia Pacific Dance Survey, and Dance as Storytelling, which leads to the annual department production Spring Forward. She is a mentor in the University Honors program, currently working with undergraduate students applying an ethnographic approach to perceiving the intersection and relationality between dance, psychology, and culturally-informed healing. She attributes her love of teaching, research, and genuine curiosity to her family, communities, and outstanding mentors throughout the years, such as Sifu Pālaka Nāmāhoe (Moʻokuʻauhau/Genealogy), Dr. Sang Chi (History), Dr. Gustavo Gonzales (Dance History), Bu Sri Susilowati (Indonesian Dance), and Danny Campbell (Theater Arts).