Asia Pacific Dance Festival Symposium 2026

Living Heritage: Resisting Form / Forming Resistances

May 22-24, 2026 | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Hybrid Format (In-person & Virtual)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

This year's symposium grows from the energy of the Asia Pacific Dance Festival (APDF) 2025's theme of Hulihia — the overturning, the rupture, the moment when things shift. If Hulihia asked us to look at disruption, this year we look at what comes after. Living Heritage turns our attention toward the practices, choices, and experiences that carry culture forward through change. Heritage is not something preserved behind glass; rather, it is embodied within communities, people, and relationships. It adapts, responds, protects, and continues. 

Simultaneously, sustaining heritage often requires resistance — resisting erasure, resisting imposed forms, resisting narratives that narrow the complexity of who we are. Artists across the Asia-Pacific region have long reshaped, reimagined, and rebuilt form as a way of asserting cultural knowledge and opening space for new futures. This is where Resisting Form / Forming Resistance takes shape: in the tension between holding on and breaking open, remembering and remaking, inheriting and innovating. 

This year, we invite works that sit in that creative tension. Works that honor lineage. Works that disrupt or rearrange inherited forms. Works that protect what must endure. Works that transforms cultural memory into new expressions. Works that explore what it means to "live heritage" — through movement, dance, film, screen media, storytelling, research, and community exchange. Living Heritage: Resisting Form / Forming Resistance invites us to gather at the point where culture continues, transfigures, and reclaims its futures. 

Exciting, APDF Symposium 2026 will take place in a hybrid format, offering both in-person and virtual participation as part of our commitment to accessibility and expanded engagement with the work and artistry of the Asia-Pacific region.

Proposal Submissions

Submissions are welcome from local, national, and international participants across three program tracks:

1) Dance Film & Screen Media Panel

2) Choreographers' Creative Exchange Platform

3) Research Presentations & Community Roundtable: Building Arts Futures in Hawaiʻi and Beyond

We invite submissions for:

• Dance films and screen media

• Choreographic works-in-progress

• Lecture-demonstrations

• Roundtable panels

• Conference papers

• Research presentations

• Community discourse

Note: To learn more about the program tracks and this year's symposium, visit outreach.hawaii.edu/apdf.

How to Submit a Proposal

To submit a proposal, click here or go directly to https://wkf.ms/3La779F.

All submissions must include:

• A 100-word bio for each presenter, performer, and/or participant

• A 250-word abstract describing the proposed work or presentation

• Personal information, including name, contact details, and affiliation 

Personal and sensitive information will be kept confidential and used only for the purposes of reviewing submissions and administering APDF programming.

For proposals submitted to the Dance Film & Screen Media Panel or the Choreographers’ Creative Exchange Platform, a video link to the work is required. Video links may be publicly accessible or unlisted, but must not be password protected. 

Applicants may submit more than one proposal, provided each proposal is submitted to a different program track. For example, an applicant may submit a dance film to the Dance Film & Screen Media Panel (Track 1) and a separate proposal to the Research Presentations & Community Roundtables (Track 3). Multiple submissions to the same program area will not be considered.

Submission deadline: February 1, 2026 @ 5PM HST

 Visit outreach.hawaii.edu/apdf for more information. Any inquiries may be sent to apdf@hawaii.edu.