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Forum in Washington, D.C. was a grand success. Participants and those that wish they could have made it can now access all the pictures, videos and materials from the four-day event.
Many of you took the opportunity to begin new collaborations with one another. Whether you've already made that connection or want to make that connection, tell us about it in the Fellows Only Discussion Section.
A couple of the participants at the forum wanted to know how to hear the song that Jon Osorio (KILP-02) played at the closing.
Says Jon of the song "I wrote 'From a Dancer' in 1995 as a farewell to my friend Keola Kamahele, a rather well-known and extremely accomplished hula practitioner who moved away from Hawaiʻi that year in order to live somewhere where he and his family could afford to own their own home. Their move was somewhat traumatic for the friends and relatives they left behind, and Keola and I had been doing a number of performances together, so it was difficult to see them leave.
"About a year later, I had a reunion with my former singing partner, Randy Borden who had moved to America more than ten years before and had returned with his family for a last visit as he had been diagnosed with a late stage colon cancer. We decided that he should sing this song on the final cd that we produced together in 1997 called E Hoʻi Mai (Return to Us). Weakened by the cancer, Randy struggled with the recording and I will always remember the strength and courage it took for him to sing this as well as he did. He died a few months later at 46."