Biography
Sean Lew (born on November 25, 2001 in Walnut, California, U.S.) is a young multi-talented professional dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, TV junior chef, actor, editor, creative director, model and a philanthropist, pianist and singer with Chinese and Japanese roots living in Los Angeles, California.
Sean got first time public eye by name at the age of 11, when a video of his jazz funk class routine, choreographed by Miguel Zarate, to the Lady Gaga's performance song "Applause" went viral in 2013 and turned him into an overnight sensation. [1] A month later he got invited to perform the dance on The Queen Latifah Show. He got most fame of public eye by his appearance on season two of NBC's World of Dance as Sean & Kaycee in 2018, but within the dance community Sean was already an established star, since her was 14, by holding workshops, hosting and attending conventions, showcasing dances and teaching masterclasses around the world in front of thousands of people.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] He stated at July 2018 that he doesn't have permanent long-term goals, because everything is so last-minute and he doesn't know where he will be tomorrow. He wants just go the flow and taking chances.[9] He isn't acutally seeking for a career as dance teacher, but wants to support groups who having a certain amount of hunger and passion for life and dance, which he had experienced himself in LA when her was younger and wants to (re-)establish it worldwide. [10]
He started dancing when he was able to walk as got inspired by his two older sisters Sarah and Sirris, who used to be competition dancers as well,[11] took his first dance classes when he was four and started competing at the age of five. He got his first professional gig as dancer when he was eight years old on the Glee show. He won on Dance-Off Juniors season one episode eight, competed on season one of NBC's World of Dance as member of ImmaBEAST and on season two with his partner Kaycee Rice as Sean & Kaycee. After that show Sean turned into a viral social media star as well and attracts with videos millions of views. As dancer he appeared on many TV shows, such as, on Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards 2012 and 2014, on Dancing with the Stars 2013 and The X-Factor together with Carly Rose Sonenclar at the finals in 2012. He was also interview guest concerning dance on NBC morning news, KTLA5 news and LA TV - The Zoo. He appeared on Sia's music short film video "The Greatest" with Maddie Ziegler.
He did commercials, for instance, for Disney, Canon, Red Bull and Old Navy.
He was also one of the important supporting members to help Janelle and her future husband William "WillDaBeast" Adams (surname did change, it is Ginestra-Adams now) founding IMMA in 2012/2013[12] and became a member of the crews ImmaBEAST and LilBEAST [13][14]. Sean is considered as big influence-r on kid dancer talents today - as dancer, choreographer, teacher and mentor. For instance, he taught at THE LAB in West Covina and supported their dancers, who won season two of World of Dance and members became hip-hop world champions as team TLxWC in the Varsity division in 2017. [15]
He started choreographing at the age of ten [16] and got finally his accolade as established choreographer during World of Dance season two by the judges, who were blown away by his unique, smart, well thought, storytelling and emotional choreography with the age of 16. Shortly afterwards he toured with Brain Friedman through Europe[17] and Asia[18] attending conventions and teaching masterclasses - even he actually hates the term, because he doesn't consider himself a master and is just holding workshops. But he already worked before with Janelle and Will for Step Up:Year of the Dance in China.[19] and taught classes in Japan[20], Mexico and, of course, across the US as member of ImmaBEAST as dancer, teacher and choreographer. His first bigger concept video as choreographer, creative director, editor and dancer was "Life Experiences: Wrong Words" in June 2017, when he worked first time on a project with his current permanent dance partner and best friend Kaycee Rice. But already "Miracle", filmed and edited by "Typo", was an impressive work.[21] Later "Breathe" was an extraordinary creation as well.[22]
Sean stated that he didn't watch often TV or playing video games, but music was an important part of his life right from the beginning. He started choreographing to express himself better by music and dancing. His older sister Serris shot the first videos of his choreography and edited it until he was 12. Soon dance partners like Jordyn Jones or Kenneth San Jose helped him showing his choreography. About after a year Sean took over filming and editing. Was a dance partner missing, a little CGI helped and he danced by himself as duet [23] or got transparent to the background.[24] Later producers like MyTypo or TJ Lewis filmed and edited his choreography with more production effort. His first dance masterclass teaching was filmed when he was 11, to help his sisters school for cherity.[25] And the end of the process Sean dropped out as a brilliant camera man, editor, creative director and choreographer. His work can be watched on his YouTube channel or sometimes Instagram account.
Sean has had already an impressive non-dance related child acting career, but he considered the character roles he got as embarrassing. [26] Regarding IMDb, he appeared on TV soup series "See Dad Run" (2014), "Sam & Cat" (2014), "Bizaardvark" (2016), "Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn" (2014), on the documentary series "On the Spot Interviews" (2013), "Rachael vs. Guy: Kids Cook-Off" (2016), on home series "Home & Family" (2016), on boulevard series "E! Live from the Red Carpet" - reporting from The Academy Awards 2015 .and several online-network-series like "To the Pointe" (2018). He also appeared on music short film "Todrick Hall: Freaks Like Me" (2014). Sean was even part of the ADR ("Automated" or "Automatic" Dialog Replacement) group of the "Penguins of Madagascar" (2014) and added his voice to the film. [27]
Sean was in public school from pre-school to second class middle school, then he tried homeschool, after then he was going a year in public high-school, and got almost kicked out due his missing time, and finally switched back to online homeschooling. He graduated technically high-school at the age of 15, but he was keep going on in high-school, because his parents as non-native English speakers couldn't support him in certain ways. Sean was in his last year in Nov 2019, but he graduated officially at Jun 19th, 2019 at the California Connections Academy. [28] [29] He finds the balancing between homeschooling, traveling, teaching and dancing really tough.
Sean also dances many years as philanthropist, for causes which matters to him, such as for http://www.idance4acure.org,[30] and supporting to fight childhood cancer. Due his engagement and popularity, and those of many other dancers and choreographers, the funds rises very well, financing research and treatments for children with cancer. Other engagements by him went public are "#prayforpaloma" [31], https://pedrogtprelief.org [32] and https://thecameronboycefoundation.org/ [33]. Notable and honorable is his engagement for UN Development Programme with the ambious goal to end poverty at 2030. If you watch the video on his channel to the end a $1 USD donation will send to UNDP power by Live Nation Concerts. People of his status normally doesn't bother just to look.
An other talent he is known for is cooking. He started cooking when he was seven years old[34] and won on season one episode 13 of "Chopped Junior" $10,000 USD [35] and been on season two by six episodes of charity fund raising "Rachael Vs. Guy: Kids Cook-Off" [36]. He started cooking to bring other dancers some selfmade lollypops and got invited from their parents to cook in their houses and somehow got on the show by that and because he same kids were later on Chopped Junior, he got on this show as well.. He loves cooking for family, friends and sometimes the whole company, but, of course, everyone is welcome to join and help preparing, washing and cleaning up. He wanted once to have his own show called "The Dancing Chef", but it seems to change to "The Cooking Dancer" now. What he later really got was starring on "Sean Lew Appoved", produced by Kaycee Network, a sort of restaurant and food critics online show, which was renewed for season two despite the low rates, because the knows the producer pretty well (aka #Metoo).[37]
Sean plays piano since he was six years old. Her won 2nd place at the Music Teachers Association of California when he was eight years old. [38] [39] Sean is also noticed as good singer and sound editor. He started singing to support his friend Tate McRae, [40] who is an excellent singer, but he didn't make it public for a long time. He published three music videos by covering "this town" by Niall Horan, "Youth ft. (Kahlid)" by Shawn Mendes and "Be Alright" by Dean Lewis. [41] [42] [43]
He got the nickname "Lewser" by his family, who said it as a joke, but made later a family merchandise by that. [44] The brand is owned by his sisters Serris and Sarah - fashion designer and computer engineer - and himself and offers a small clothing line.
His skills as dancer are not less impressive. He started dancing with his older siblings Sarris and Sarah at Mather Dance Studio at the age of four and became a member of Mather Dance company. He got at the beginning most of his technical training there - ballet, contemporary, jazz, tap, lyrical and hip-hop. He started with tap, then hip-hop and then he was trained within 4-5 years in ballet. He performed his first hip-hop dance on stage even before had a class. Most impressive, he learned ball room dancing as well and won with his partner "Sia" at the age of 8 or 9 two championships with the standards Rumba, Samba, Jive, ChaCha and Paso Nova in Latin dancing. [45][46] Due his work as dancing far from the dance community, he took also a lot of dance industrial classes in LA with some of the most influential and established choreographers. He got first time on The Pulse convention when he was eight years old, and was made to Pulse Protegè without even knowing what is this all about or competing for it, just by the attention of the choreographers, his self-expression in the forefront and his daring clothing. Finally got later on The Pulse on Tour in 2013 at the age of 12 as Elite Protégé and graduated as Elite Alumnus in 2014. Two years before, he met his friend and mentor those days William "WillDaBEAST" Adams, who became later to a kind of dance father or big brother for Sean and Sean supported him and his future wife Janelle Ginestra(-Adams) founding ImmaBEAST, by dancing on his videos, finding supporters and even cooking. In these days one of the most important dance industry companies in the world. Sean mixed more and more other influences to his style of dancing. NEYO stated at NBC's World of Dance season two to him: "I feel I can watch someone else do your choreography and go 'Yeah, that's Sean.'"
Sean also learned the classics beyond mainstream dancing. Especially Galen Hooks, Tessandra Chavez and Nika Kjun give him frequently retro approaches. Galen let Sean perform "The West Side Story" like a Broadway veteran,[47][48] hard rock like the 80's (which drives the girls in classes crazy by this animal)[49] and jazz funk.[50] Nika let Sean feel the 70's by "Greace", [51] funk and urban dance[52]. Or soft rock by Tessandra [53] His new partner Kaycee Rice stated in NBC's World of Dance season two: "He is literally good at everything. He is basically like a dance genius." His strongest suit is hip-hop.[54] Sean's fingerprint of dancing can be described as the "Master of 1,001 Figures with Hands and Legs", making waves with his body[55][56] and the most fierce accentuation of dancers of the younger generation. Giving him millions of permutations by texture movements and basics for innovative choreography as well. Due his ballet training he is capable do 8-10 two-feet-leading pirouettes in row and very fast, even with closed arms (extremely difficult), and a backward barrel, a 360° turn jump backwards with hanging arms.
He doesn't have such flexibility like his partner Kaycee [57] - he was frequently complaining that he has a spine and cannot do that - but the same musicality. Sean on the other hand has an accentuation by texture movements Kaycee cannot match (hardly anyone can)[58] The couple is always noticed as outstanding, because both are extremely clean, controlled by a lot of multi-coordinated texture movements, fierce accentuation [59] and high expressive performance.[60] Their chemistry is considered legendary for their age. Both were nominated for the Industry Dance Awards 2018 for most fierce dancer under 18, together with Charlize Glass, JT Church and the winner Eva Igo.
In 2019, Sean choreographed a music video for mega-star Meghan Trainor "AFTER YOU (Directed by Charm La'Donna)" on Vevo-YT with just 17 years old and is starring with Kaycee on it as duet. Meghan was actually a secret fan of Sean for many years and they finally met at October 31, 2019. He started in April a crowd funding project for his new short film of dancing cultures worldwide with planned budget $65,000 USD. He was nominated for a Arena Award in the category "Rising Star of the year" together with Emma Portner, Logan Edra and the winner Bailey Sok. He was performing the NBC World of Dance World Final intermezzo show on season three together with Kaycee Rice and Ian Eastwood while NE-YO was singing on stage. They got the honor to be in line with dance legends like Les Twins, Keone & Mari Madrid, Derek Hough, The Kinjaz, The Lab, Charity Anderson & Andres Peñate and Michael Dameski. Finally the Step Up: Year of the Dance (aka Step Up China or Step Up 6) movie was released. Sean was assistant choreographer for it along with William "Willdabeast" Adams, Janelle Ginestra-Adams and Jaken Isaiah Preston, featuring Jade Cynoweth and Janelle Ginestra-Adams and Wei Qi and SuperDino are starring. It is currently with about $17,000,000 USD estimated budget Sean's biggest project he participated in. [61] A convention dance video with Kaycee to the song "False Confidence" by Noah Kahan went viral by 5M+ views within just one month and got Noah's personal attention and the adorable Australian invited them to perfom in LA live on stage with him.[62] When Sean turned 18 he celebrated it in Iceland at Reykjavík with his family and Kaycee [63] Before became an adult he already visited many countries in the world. In this year it was at least China, Dominican Republic, Poland, Japan, Iceland and Denmark. Not many people can claim to be a world citizen at his age.