Margaret Grenier and the indigenous dance group Damelahamid have been prepping for nearly two years to represent the Coastal First Nations of British Columbia at the Asia Pacific Dance Festival in Honolulu.

“We’re trying to find a way to pack everything,” she said, a light sigh in her voice, calling on a July Sunday.

Among the challenges: how to pack the giant wooden masks donned by her dancers to create high-drama narratives on stage. It would be unthinkable to leave them behind.

The masks belong to family traditions continued for generations, Grenier said, despite a decades-long Canadian ban on public displays of indigenous culture, which only lapsed in 1951.

“What really inspires me is that those who came before us put so much love for their children in ensuring our songs and dances practices were not lost,” she said. “These practices help to show our strong connections to our lands, to our families, and to the comfort and joy we feel in being part of something greater than ourselves.”

Opportunities to share Damelahamid’s dances are few, even in the Pacific Northwest, Grenier said, and the multi-faceted format of the Asia Pacific Dance Festival is even more rare.

“I am excited to be part of this. There is so much more to this festival than stage performance,” she said.

The festival, underway this week and next, is the fifth biennial program presented by University of Hawaii-Manoa Outreach College and the East-West Center Arts Program.

THE ASIA Pacific Dance Festival is an immersive two-week program, bringing together four guest masters and their dance troupes, two from Hawaii and two representing other areas of the vast Pacific Rim region.

Cumulatively, the four headliner groups have garnered dozens of prestigious awards, using dance as an instrument for building multicultural understanding and for fostering pride over their own cultural identities and places of origin.

The festival’s theme is “ho‘ala,” which means “to awaken.” Organizers say this reflects how cultural dances spark the imagination, evoking captivating and enduring narratives of human experience.

“We look to bring in groups that are eager to share their knowledge, on and off stage,” said UH Outreach College’s Tim Slaughter, who scouts the Pacific Rim for culturally rooted dance artists.

“Sharing perpetuates the dances and enlightens people about what it means to have a living cultural practice. That has always been our vision for this event,” Slaughter said.

Guest artists spend a two-week residency in Honolulu, presenting two finale concerts.

This gratifies Grenier, who formed Damelahamid in 2010, reaching out to a wider and younger audience with splashes of digital imagery and contemporary music to complement her choreography.

“Damelahamid speaks to the indigenous worldview of a place where there are no barriers to our connections with nature,” she said. “That is why you will see transformation in our masked dances between animal and human forms.”

Grenier said this festival is also an opportunity to explore the kinship she feels with Native Hawaiians, given their similar histories of colonialist suppression of indigenous culture. “The chance to bond at this festival and not only share but learn from others gives us the chance to strengthen what we do as artists, which is to innovate upon tradition and carry it forward,” she said.

KUMU HULA Michael Pili Pang has been tapped to be the representative of Hawaii’s indigenous dance this year, as director of Halau Hula Ka No‘eau. Having played various roles with the festival since it began in 2011, Pang said he appreciates the synergy generated by fellow artists coming together from afar.

“We are all working in an area which is not just a profession, it is a passion. It is this love of creativity which is a part of us,” he said.

Cultural dance evolves in the modern world, Pang notes. His halau’s performance will share “a chronology of hula” consisting of three different versions of “Hole Waimea” (“Spear-makers of Waimea”), first composed 200 years ago in tribute to King Kamehameha but remade as Hawaiian cultural practitioners changed their musical styles in step with changing times.

“This addresses the misconception that it is time to stick kahiko (ancient hula) in a museum,” Pang said. “Those of us concerned with indigenous identity stand on our foundation as we look to the future.”

To drive home the point, Pang is also once again mounting the “Living Art of Hula,” an event of his own invention, which convenes accomplished local dancers to talk story with an audience. “We rarely get to hear dancers speak up and share their own stories,” he said.

A similar zeal to breathe new life into traditional dance threads through the work of Professor of Dance Joseph Gonzales, director and founder of Kuala Lumpur’s ASK Dance Company, representing Malaysia at this year’s festival.

In an email, Gonzales deplored the dilution of authentic Malaysian dance in his nation. “I am not a politician,” he said, “so the dances you will see from ASK Dance Company are a way of addressing the problems.”

In video clips, ASK Dance Company is dazzling: sumptuous costuming, Gangnam-like athleticism, and technical proficiency that wouldn’t be out of place on television’s “So You Think You Can Dance.” But look again and the weave of hand and foot gestures clearly pivot to Malaysian roots.

These contemporary pieces provide youth with empowerment that, he is convinced, spills over into shoring up identity and public empowerment.

“I want my young company members to hold their heads up and their backs straight and be leaders in our society,” Gonzales said.

COUNT ON a change of pace but no less of a paragon of diversity and innovation in “Local Motion,” the festival concert devoted to a Hawaii-based group outside the realm of hula. This year, it features Kikunobu, Hawaii’s venerated Japanese classical dance ensemble, which applies a mind-over-matter philosophy to train the body to follow the circular flows of phenomena in nature.

“It is like painting a picture in the mind and then putting it down not on paper but in movement,” said Howard Asao.

A longtime student of school founder Gertrude Yuki Tsutsui, Asao has taken over the reins of Kikubundo in the seventh decade of his life. He considers himself a student of the ascetic Japanese form known as nihon buyo, which taught him that the most meaningful movement is the slowest. This leads him into observing and learning about his environment — especially nature.

Reserved and meditative as the performance appears, Asao wants everyone who attends to be aware that an accent on sharing with an audience still applies. If he, for example, lifts a bamboo fan, the most important implement in his practice, and points it in your direction, he is sending energy out to you.

“The you in the audience should send something back,” Asao said. “We give a lot, but we can see if people are mesmerized and we can feel the energy of the audience.”

Echoing his fellow artists, Asao said, “That’s the spirit of the dance. It’s two-way communication process. We all share in making it meaningful in our lives.”

ASIA PACIFIC DANCE FESTIVAL

Presented by the University of Hawaii at Manoa

Tickets: $12-$34; 4-concert package $99, Concerts & Culinary Celebration package $179; 808ne.ws/APDF2019, 956-8246

>> Living the Art of Hula: 7:30 p.m. today, Orvis Auditorium

>> Local Motion: 4 p.m. Sunday, Kennedy Theatre

>> Welcoming Ceremony: 6 p.m. Aug. 2, Jefferson Hall. Free.

>> Culinary Celebration and Silent Auction: 5 p.m. Aug. 3, Kennedy Theatre, $80

>> Ike Hana I: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 3, Kennedy Theatre

>> Ike Hana II: 2 p.m. Aug. 4, Kennedy Theatre (preshow chat 1:15 p.m.)