Omi Tutu: Cool Waters

Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Starts at 6:30pm
Run time: 60 minutes with no intermission

Award-Winning Performance | Beyond Border(lands) Award – 2026
Tucson Fringe Festival

“⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This one-woman show was profoundly moving and very, very impressive. The cinematography added such depth.” – Tucson Fringe
Festival Audience Review

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OMI TUTU: COOL WATERS, the award winning multimedia dance performance by Dance Artist & Cultural Ethnologist, Kimberly Miguel Mullen, M.A. makes its Maui premiere at ProArt Playhouse in Kihei for one special evening.

Created in collaboration with Oscar nominated filmmaker Craig Renaud, this immersive performance weaves together dance, film, original field recordings, and ritual to create a powerful exploration of water, memory, and transformation.

The evening’s program runs approximately 30-minutes and concludes with a special artist talkback and audience Q&A with Kimberly Miguel Mullen and Craig Renaud, offering a behind the scenes look at the creative process, ethnographic research, and cultural inspiration behind the work.

OMI TUTU honors the sacred waters and divine feminine forces within the Yoruba Oricha tradition. Through dance, film, and sound, the performance explores elemental forces, ancestral memory, and embodied spiritual practices of the African diaspora, inviting audiences into a shared space of reflection, reverence and renewal.

Film on location across Maui over the course of nearly four years, Craig Renaud’s breathtaking cinematography captures the island’s luminous coastlines, rivers, moutnains, waterfalls, and volcanic landscapes, revealing the profound beauty and sacred presence of Hawaii’s natural world. The film imagery serves not only as a visual backdrop but as an active participant in the performance, creating a living dialogue between land, water, and the moving body.

Rooted in more than 30 years of Mullen’s research in AfroCaribbean and AfroBrazilian sacred dance traditions, the work pays homage to Las Dos Aguas (“the two waters”): Yemaya, Orisha of the Sea and divine universal mother archetype, and Ochun, deity of the sweet waters, love, and beauty. The performance features original field recordings from Mullen’s ethnographic research in Cuba with the acclaimed musicians of Ballet Folklorico Cutumba in Santiago de Cuba. Mullen has been a guest teacher on Maui since 2002, where she has cultivated a vibrant community of dancers and where the island has become a cherished artistic home.

The Maui premiere of OMI TUTU: Cool Waters is presented as part of Mullen’s Annual Sacred Dance Residency with workshops held in Kahului at Baila Baila and Paia at Maui Yoga Shala, celebrating more than two decades of cultural exchange through movement, music, and community.

About the Artists

Kimberly Miguel Mullen, M.A. is a classically trained folkloric dance artist and cultural ethnologist who contributes to a legacy of performers from the Caribbean, Cuba and Brazil. Rooted in 30-years of research, apprenticeship, and training, Mullen expands the reach of African diasporic forms through groundbreaking performances, teachings, cultural travel curricula and artistic collaborations; her first multi-media collaboration with award-winning, Oscar nominated documentary filmmaker Craig Renaud.

kmmdancestudio.com

Craig Renaud is an Oscar Nominated, Peabody and DuPont Award winning filmmaker and has spent the past two decades producing films and television programs with his late brother Brent Renaud. The Renaud Brothers are best known for telling humanistic stories from the World’s conflict zones and their projects have covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, the fight for Mosul, extremism in Africa, cartel violence in Mexico, and the youth refugee crisis in Central America.

renaudbrothers.com