About Me
A Hawaii girl on Broadway and on-camera.
Sitting on my mother’s lap for a family photo. Fun fact: One of my older brothers (shown sans glasses above) once broke his arm leaning and falling over a railing while spying on me secretly trying on my sister’s prom dress in her bedroom.
As a fifth-generation Chinese American born and raised in Honolulu, I grew up eating spam musubis after school, having jook (Chinese rice porridge) on Sundays with my Popo (my mother’s mother), and camping on beaches and visiting volcanoes on school field trips. The youngest of four children, I grew up never having the TV remote, watching my brothers play Street Fighter, and secretly trying on my sister’s clothes.
I didn’t know it then, but a major moment in my life happened when I was five, when my mom took me to my first ballet class. My dad thought it’d supplement my martial arts training. It indeed did help my kickboxing and Wing Chun, as the discipline and athleticism of ballet made me a quick learner and high kicker. But fast forward to my senior year of high school and I was drowning my spare time in ballet rehearsals and competing in various international ballet competitions in the US and Europe. I was hooked on ballet. Sorry, Dad!
After graduating from high school, I danced at Ballet Theatre of Maryland for two seasons, Milwaukee Ballet for one season, and taught ballet while taking online classes with the University of Hawaii. Wanting to explore the dance market in Europe, I lived just outside of London for a year through the UH Study Abroad Program so I could continue my schooling while auditioning for European ballet companies.
At the end of my time in Europe, I was heartbroken as I discovered a labral tear in my hip and faced limited offers from ballet companies. I decided to return to my “ohana” in Honolulu to resume my studies full time at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, majoring in Civil Engineering. While home, I competed in a local Chinese beauty pageant called the Miss Narcissus Queen Beauty Pageant (named after a flower, not a narcissist) and had the honor of being crowned the 2015 Miss Narcissus Queen and Miss Talent of the Chinese festival.
My pageant talent, a combo of Chinese classical dance and ballet . <3
Former colleague Alex being like: Whoa, bad guys!
Me being like: I gotchu! -In Your Arms rehearsal
During my reign, the dance I created for the pageant’s talent portion, a combination of Chinese classical dance and ballet, was brought to the attention of Tony award-winning choreographer Christoper Gattelli. I soon found myself taking a break from school to dance a principal role in his production of In Your Arms at The Old Globe in San Diego, CA - another life changing moment I was not expecting!
Meeting and working with incredible Broadway actors in that production, including Donna McKechnie and George Chakiris, I quickly caught the theater bug and soon after moved to New York, thwarting my plans to return to obtaining my BS in Civil Engineering.
Since then, the Big Apple has been kind to me. I’ve been honored to make my Broadway debut in The King & I, spend a year on the road with the 1st US national tour of the Broadway production of An American in Paris, and open a Broadway production as part of the original cast of the 2018 revival of M. Butterfly, not to mention having the absolute joy of bringing principal roles to The Muny and Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera.
Nowadays, you can catch me in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway while exploring the on-camera world, most recently as Myra in CBS’ NCIS: Hawaii. In between performances you can find me pounding a bowl of roast duck noodle soup at Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles II. I also enjoy shopping at farmers markets, walking my senior rescue dog named Gizmo, watching Dr. Pimple Popper, skimming Facebook Marketplace for home goods, and cooking new recipes because food = life.
My sweet senior named Gizmo, adopted from For Our Friends.