Movement
Cuban salsa and Rueda have been part of my life for more than twenty years, beginning during student life in Paris. Since then, dancing has travelled with me: dancing, teaching or helping organise activities across several countries, including Japan and Malaysia, and more recently in Tbilisi.
Responding together
In Rueda de Casino, pairs dance in a circle and respond to a caller. Some moves stay within a pair; others move dancers around the circle. The caller chooses what comes next, so the group responds in real time rather than following one fixed choreography.
A small vocabulary of moves can be enough to begin. Timing, rhythm and attention to others are already part of the practice, before the calls become complex. Beginner access matters, as does respect for each person’s boundaries around physical contact.
Dance in the Community
In Tokyo, I joined Rueda at the Park Tokyo, a community organising free outdoor sessions in public parks. I soon became one of its organisers, helping bring together dancers from a loosely connected community of several hundred members. In 2019, I co-organised and participated in Tokyo's contribution to the International Rueda de Casino Flash Mob Day. That same year, I also introduced rueda at my workplace, K. International School Tokyo, leading a small student group that performed at the school's annual performance night.
After moving to Kuala Lumpur during the COVID pandemic, I found that rueda had largely disappeared from the local social-dance scene. Drawing on my Tokyo experience, I created Rueda de Park KL, organising free, open-to-all outdoor sessions. The initiative attracted a growing community and eventually participated in its first International Rueda de Casino Flash Mob Day in 2023. Explore my Rueda videos on YouTube.
Before leaving Malaysia, I invited an experienced rueda caller and his partner to continue organising the Kuala Lumpur sessions, with the intention of preserving the original spirit of a free, welcoming activity open to everyone.
Other ways of moving
Calisthenics is a regular part of my life. Martial arts were a significant earlier influence rather than a current practice. Both have shaped my relationship with movement, alongside my experience of teaching physical education.
Creation & Play
Photography
My interest in photography began in 2005, during my first trip to Japan with my father and brother, shortly after completing my degree in physical education. Having been fascinated by Japan for years, I was struck by how much there was to discover through simply observing my surroundings. Digital photography offered a way to capture scenes, details and moments that I found beautiful, intriguing or meaningful, and perhaps convey something of that experience to others.
I later acquired a DSLR and several lenses, exploring not only photography itself but also the possibilities of processing RAW images to bring them closer to what I had envisioned when taking them. My engagement with photography gradually diminished around the pandemic and my move to Malaysia. These days, I rarely take out my camera, but I still prefer the experience of using it to photographing with a smartphone, however capable modern phones have become.
Conversations and Audio/Video Editing
Another creative endeavour grew from my interest in ethical questions surrounding food and the treatment of non-human animals. As an avid podcast listener, I decided to try producing my own, interviewing people in Japan whose work or interests revolved around plant-based living.
Between May 2019 and June 2020, I produced and hosted 26 long-form interviews with restaurant owners, activists and people involved in fields such as ethical fashion. These conversations offered opportunities to explore different perspectives and experiences, while the project itself introduced me to new aspects of media production. Around that period, I also explored translation, subtitling and video editing.
Exploring New Possibilities with AI
More recently, generative AI has opened up a different range of possibilities. As an educator, I consider understanding these technologies essential to making informed decisions about where they can support learning and where they risk replacing the very thinking students are meant to develop.
Beyond education, I have been fascinated by what AI-assisted coding makes possible without a conventional programming background. My first experiment was HotADex, a reference tool for one of my favourite video game franchises. I subsequently worked on a professional website for Priscilla Josh, a professional dancer, personal trainer and holistic mover. The website you are reading is another such experiment.
Video Games and Visual Creativity
Video games themselves have been part of my life since childhood, becoming one of my principal hobby during my teenage years. Back then, I was primarily absorbed by the pleasure of playing and exploring imaginary worlds.
Over time, my appreciation of the medium as a whole has only grown, from its extraordinary creative possibilities—visual design, music, storytelling and gameplay mechanics—to the technologies that continue to expand what games can offer. At the same time, playing has become a relatively minor part of my life, and I now follow developments in the medium more often than I actively engage with it. My growing admiration has also been accompanied by a greater awareness of its complexities, from the working conditions behind game development to commercial practices designed to capture and retain players' attention.
My interest in visual creativity also goes back to childhood, when I enjoyed drawing characters from the fictional worlds that captivated me. More recently, I have occasionally returned to painting through miniature figures. Experimenting with colours, textures and painting techniques has been rewarding, even if the time and patience required to achieve a satisfying result can sometimes be frustrating.