Mary Jo Freshley

Mary Jo Freshley

Born in Ohio, Mary Jo majored in Physical Education & Health, receiving both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Bowling Green State University. After teaching two years in Michigan and three at Bowling Green State University, she came to Hawaiʻi in 1961 to teach at Kamehameha Schools, where she taught for 33 years. She began learning various types of dance at the University of Hawai’i in 1962, the year she first studied Korean dance with Halla Huhm, and has continued in her studio ever since. She has also studied Japanese, Okinawan, Javanese, and Filipino dance. Her first dance experiences in college, however, centered around modern dance, and she performed in modern dance concerts at UHM Kennedy Theatre under Carl Wolz, when he was Director of Dance.
She has been teaching at the Halla Huhm Korean Dance Studio since 1974 ,and has taught the Korean dance class at UHM since 1998.