little IanNever in my wildest childhood dreams could I imagine I would find myself where I am today. I was born on September 22, 1982 in Cedar Rapids, IA. I was raised by a loving conservative family. In high school I swam on our state-wide famous swim team. At state, my senior year I took 3rd in the 200yd medley relay and 11th in the 100yd backstroke. I played on the tennis team and was 2nd team all-metro. I was an excellent ping pong player, and I could take on anyone in Super Smash Brothers and James Bond: GoldenEye for Nintendo64.

Throughout this time I was consistently drawn to the theater. However, training for the Super Smash Brothers tournament at the swim team parties took up a lot of time. I did manage to land a few good roles like ‘Robin Hood’ in the children’s production of Robin Hood, and ‘Action’ in West Side Story. I received my introduction to dance from our show choir 

“Momentum.” During my senior year we won a national show choir competition in Fort Wayne, IN. That year I served as a dance captain and received an Outstanding Performer and Best Male Dancer award. The wonderful rush of bliss I experienced during these performances encouraged me to start taking dance and performance more seriously.

I attended college at Wesleyan University working towards a major in Economics and doing modern dance and Tea Kwon Do as hobbies. It was during my freshman year I saw another student spinning a broom handle in a strange manner that changed the direction of my life. He was practicing fire staff for the fire performance club, Prometheus.

I quickly joined and learned everything they had to teach. By my senior year I was president of the club, had taught myself staff, poi, whips, rope, and had choreographed several pieces and a few staff battles. My dance and other artistic impulses were slowly making themselves known and my class schedule had changed to reflect them. During my last semester I took music theory along with singing lessons, and three dance classes, including an advanced modern dance class with Lisa Race.

Movement and art had seeped into my life. After graduation instead of taking a year off and traveling around Europe, I decided to spend the summer dancing at the American Dance Festival and then move to the Bay Area and be a fire dancer until it was time for me to get a ‘real’ job and use that economics major. I received a scholarship to attend the dance festival and was deeply inspired by some of the top dancers in America, then shortly after moved to Oakland.

Since moving to Oakland I have learned to manipulate several other props like double staves, flow wand, contact juggling, contact staff, nunchucks, mini hoops, fire eating, fire contact, and fire fingers. I taught fire poi as the Director of Training and Education and was being groomed for the presidency at the Temple of Poi, worked as Marketing Director at Fire Pixie Entertainment as well as worked as a children's entertainer, and taught fire dance workshops throughout the US and europe with the Spinagogue, which I co-founded. Recently I have also begun a fire arts and culture magazine called Kindle.

Fire performance credits include: Temple of Poi performance troupe MN8FX, Fire Pixie Entertainment, Copper Lantern Fire Theater, the band Think13; I have co-founded the fire performance troupes Vulcan Crew and LumenAscent. For modern dance I have trained extensively in the Axis Syllabus taught by Kira Kirsch, and have performed with Kim Epifano and Epiphany productions. I currently dance with Capacitor, Corpi Liquidi and In Step Dance Theater,