Make
them feel
something.
IT STARTED WITH MOVEMENT —
I felt it before
I knew what it was.
Some of my happiest childhood memories are of my grandmother dancing. She was Hawaiian, and whenever a song reminded her of home, she'd get up from her desk and hula. I just knew I loved watching her. She seemed to disappear into the movement, and for a few minutes, it felt like she could take me back to Hawaiʻi with her.
A few years later, I ended up as the only boy in an after-school dance program. I was seven or eight. Somehow, I never really left the stage.
A LIFE ON STAGE —
One thing really did lead to another. Dance became competitive color guard and drum corps, then a professional performing career that grew alongside years of choreography and directing. I performed for live audiences and on camera—in arenas, stadiums, theme parks, cruise ships, and on stages across more than 50 countries.
After enough years performing, I started noticing everything happening around me. The music. The staging. The other performers. Where the audience was looking. What was working and what wasn’t. I loved being part of the show—but I was becoming even more interested in how the show came together.
I started seeing
the big picture.
SEEING POTENTIAL —
I could usually see it
before they could.
For years, I worked with young performers who would come to me frustrated by what they couldn’t do yet. I could see the frustration, the insecurity, the gaps in their training—but I could also see past all of it. I could usually picture the performer they were capable of becoming long before they could.
So we worked toward that version. Sometimes that meant encouragement. Sometimes structure, repetition, higher expectations, or pushing harder than they thought they could. My job wasn’t to make them into something they weren’t. It was to recognize what was already there, give it somewhere to go, and help them do the work to get there.
More than a decade later,
some of them still reach out.
What stays with me, is how often they remember being believed in, especially at a time when they didn’t know how to believe in themselves.
Eventually, I realized
I do this with more
than performers.
Give me a room that isn’t working, a business that feels stuck, an artist with too many directions to choose from, or an idea that hasn’t quite found its shape, and my instinct is much the same. I want to understand what’s there, what’s getting in the way, and what it could become with the right attention.
Seeing the possibility is
usually the easy part.
The work is figuring out
how to get there.
WHAT I’M CURIOUS ABOUT —
When worlds collide.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what happens when different kinds of artists are invited into the same idea. Not simply documenting one another's work, but actually making something together.
What happens when a dancer works with a ceramicist? When movement becomes part of arranging flowers? When a musician responds to a painter while the painting is still being made?
I don't necessarily know what all of those things become yet. That's part of why I'm interested in them.
THE IKEBANA PROJECT
PERFORMANCE CONCEPT · IN DEVELOPMENT
An idea growing out of a screenplay: what if arranging flowers became choreography? I’m exploring a short performance piece where flowers, branches, dancers, and movement build an arrangement together—turning a quiet act of making into something theatrical.
ARTIST + ARTIST
COLLABORATIVE FILM · EXPLORATION
I’m interested in what happens when artists who work in different forms make something together. I’ve started experimenting with musicians and performers through small visual studies like this one—and I’d love to push that idea further: a ceramicist and a dancer, a painter and a musician, a maker and a performer.
WHITE THUNDER
SCREENPLAY · IN DEVELOPMENT
A feature screenplay set aboard an Alaskan cruise ship, drawing from my years performing at sea. It’s a story about ambition, family, rivalry, and the strange little world that exists when your workplace happens to be moving through Alaska.
STILL MAKING —
I never really
left the stage.
The stage just got bigger.
What began with movement has found its way into rooms, brands, films, stories, and whatever I’m curious enough to explore next. The medium changes. The instinct doesn’t.
I still want to make something worth paying attention to—with people I trust, ideas I believe in, and enough room to discover something none of us could have planned from the beginning.