Current

Michael recently premiered time/life/beauty, a new multidisciplinary dance theater, music, and publishing project, with Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, inspired by the art and legacy of Ryuichi Sakamoto, with additional choreography and performance by Mohammed Smahneh aka Barges and music by H.Sinno. World premiere was at Duke Arts/Duke University in January 2026. Made possible with support from: National Dance Project Production Grant, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts supported by the Mellon Foundation and Doris Duke Foundation; Texas Performing Arts/University of Texas at Austin; Mount Holyoke College; and Thalian Hall.

time/life/beauty tours to Middlebury College (VT) on March 6-7, 2026 and Lafayette College (PA) on March 6, 2027.

asymm, Michael’s new solo performance, is in development with the support of Mount Holyoke College.

Stay tuned for production, tour, and publishing updates!

More…

Creative Projects

Current projects:
time/life/beauty
asymm
Garden of the Wilis
MuNK
Nikkei-Chan
Our Utopia

Writing

An Empty Room: Imagining Butoh and the Social Body in Crisis – Michael’s book in butoh-related history, theory and practice, released in 2022 from Wesleyan University Press, was shortlisted for the de la Torre Bueno Prize for best first book by the Dance Studies Association! (Order here!)

blind spot: media, memory, and resistance – Published November 2022, unpacking intercultural embodiment, history, and oppression in my experience of being Asian American in the US and Thailand.

Empire of Prisons: Reading Roland Barthes and Hijikata Tatsumi in the animus of laughter (a bit older from 2020, but the essay I’m most proud of in my life…:)