Shaun Evaristo moves people.
How the dancer, choreographer, and founder of Movement Lifestyle designs classes that bring the best out of people.
Last month, I interviewed my friend, Shaun Evaristo, about his approach to teaching dance. I love to dance, but Shaun’s on another level. A Bay Area native, Shaun’s a dancer, a choreographer, and the founder of the LA-based Movement Lifestyle (mL). If you follow the world of urban dance, there’s a good chance you know mL.
I spoke to Shaun because my work has never strayed too far from bringing strangers face to face. Recently, I’ve been researching what makes for a compelling in-person experience. After a Shaun class, I’ve seen dancers high on life, others gushing with gratitude, some even in tears.
How does he move people to that point? How does he approach teaching and designing his classes?
Enjoy my favorite tidbits from our interview below.
Kevin Huynh: So how did you start dancing?
Shaun Evaristo: When I was 5, I was watching Michael Jackson, you know.
KH: Like all of us.
SE: Yeah, like everybody else, right? Watching Michael… copying him. I think my Mom has photos.
Then I vividly remember my Mom watching the Filipino channel and watching people dance in groups. I thought, “I could do that.” So I started a dance group with my cousins. I called them—I was 10, they were 7 or 8—and said, “Hey, we’re going to make a dance group. We’re going to meet every Friday at my house, and I’ll have my Mom cook spaghetti.”
“Hey, we’re going to make a dance group. We’re going to meet every Friday at my house, and I’ll have my Mom cook spaghetti.”
KH: That sounds like the best.
SE: Right? Mom’s spaghetti. It was just the chance to be with the fam, and it really did happen every Friday. Then as we got older, we had more friends and more family that wanted to join in.
We would perform at events, like a local fiesta, family party or someone’s cotillion. Then we started getting a reputation. “That’s that Filipino group that performs at cotillions and stuff.” We had this little rep inside of the Bay area among our friends.
Fun fact: Shaun drives by in the first car of La La Land’s opening scene.
It wasn’t until I turned 18 when I got serious with dance. In high school, someone found out that I danced, and I was like, “Shit. I just want to dance, I just want to do my thing.” So I hid it from everyone. But I had a high school rally where someone asked, “Can you choreograph our thing?” and I was like, “Oh, shoot! I guess I’m gonna try. This is what I do.”
So when I taught this group of people from my rally, I realized that everyone was having fun and enjoyed it. That made me so happy. I could teach people my routines, and they can be happy from me teaching this thing that I made up. It brought me so much joy, that I decided that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I looked and asked questions like “where can I make this my career?” I found out watching music videos that Los Angeles was the place to go.
Watch Shaun perform and teach at Snowglobe Perspective in Los Angeles (2016). I recommend sticking through the second half to see the students perform as well.
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After building a reputation with his first crews Gen2 and The Company, Shaun eventually moved to LA at age 18 where he learned the ropes teaching, auditioning, and choreographing. By 2008, Shaun was teaching regularly, flying in and out of Asia to develop other artists. Later on, he’d tour with performers like Omarion and Justin Bieber.
With his brother, CJ, Shaun started Movement Lifestyle to represent dancers. The company has since evolved into a NoHo studio, clothing brand and store.
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mL’s General Store in North Hollywood, CA. Photo from mlgeneralstore.com
KH: You had some foresight to name the company “Movement Lifestyle” and not “Movement Management” or “Movement X.”
My business partner Bailey loves the idea of an amphibious vehicle that can go anywhere. mL is a management company at first, but it might turn into something else, so we will name it appropriately. We know this name represents what we want to represent, and we’ll take it wherever it needs to go.
SE: Yeah, that’s sort of what happened. I didn’t want to use the word dance, because there are lots of people that aren’t into dance, and at the end of the day what I’m doing is movement.
I didn’t want to use the word dance, because there are lots of people that aren’t into dance, and at the end of the day what I’m doing is movement.
Everybody has their own version of what that is and how they live it. I’ve always thought, whether you are a DJ, a designer, a painter, or a dancer, you have to move to accomplish what it is that you want to do. If you can live this lifestyle, then to me that is the embodiment of us. Movement is a lifestyle.
It goes beyond dance. It’s just that dance is where I come from so that is what mL is rooted in. Nike started with running, so mL is born out of dance. I’m so proud to say that. Now as we get older, I could see us starting to branch out.
KH: How do you go about choreographing a piece to teach?
SE: I like to say, “Always give yourself 10% chance.”
You create up until 90%, and then 10% you leave to chance because that’s the exciting part. If you go all of the way to 100, then you have curated up until that point. You know exactly what’s going to happen every single time.
Always give yourself 10% chance.
That’s just going to get boring. I love to lead it up to 90, and then let the wind take it from there. I always leave that 10%.
Sometimes I go 15 or 20…
KH: Haha. 50/50!
SE: Haha. Let’s go! But how awesome to really push in and dial in as much as you can with whatever you’re creating, and then to cut yourself off and say, “I’m just going to leave the rest to the wind.”
Then that 10% leaves you the ability to take it somewhere that the universe has the ability to come in, and you have no control over it. That no control point, to me, is a beautiful part.
Arena X Kinjaz Kamp in Chengdu, China. Photo by VIBRVNCY / @abadimage / @jyshih21
KH: That’s awesome. I’m guilty of trying to go 0 to 100 a lot, and it’s like, “This might have gone all according to plan, but it was missing something.”
SE: Right, right, some sort of magic. I think that’s where I believe the world or the universe comes in — just up until that point, once you reach that 90, and then, “Okay, okay, what’s going to happen? I don’t know. Let’s find out! Let’s find out!”
KH: Woo!
SE: Whether that’s creating something from a business perspective or a choreography perspective or a freestyle perspective, I know what my body is capable of doing. But then I always leave chance.
I’m going to let the music take me from here. It’s always guiding me, but then there are just moments where I’m like, “Okay, time to blackout now!” [woosh sound]
KH: Let it ride. So how do you approach designing a class?
SE: Other choreographers helped me understand a flow and a structure and that there are different ways to teach. But yoga helped me set an intention. Meditation helped me understand a lot as well.
So from that, I realized that I can take people on a ride from setting an intention to then creating exercises. Then from the piece, I push that even further. Now that you’ve learned movement from the routine that I’ve made, how can I drive this intention?
Okay, now that we’ve learned a routine, how can I pull this soul out of you to be expansive and for you to have an experience? I can’t break it out of you, but I can push you to the point of breaking it out. The rest is up to you. You’ve got to fully commit.
I believe that vulnerability is power and I can help take you to that point, but now you’ve got to open that door to release yourself. I think that’s where breakthroughs happen.
Okay, now that we’ve learned a routine, how can I pull this soul out of you to be expansive and for you to have an experience? I can’t break it out of you, but I can push you to the point of breaking it out.
Shaun teaching at CAMP.
KH: How do you push people to that point?
SE: How do I push people to that point? I guess it depends on the piece and the class, but if I can set the intention and encourage, make the class fun and exciting or laughable — because it’s just dance, right? If I can think about all these things and encompass them and push them into the class, then I’m doing my best.
Hopefully that’ll be enough for them to break through. Does everyone break through? No, and that’s not always the point, you know? Sometimes, it’s just to have fun and that can be a breakthrough point as well. Maybe some people are so dead serious on making this of something that you forget that it’s just dance, and this is just to have fun.
Teaching to Lion Babe’s “Treat Me Like Fire” at Sinostage in Chengdu, China (2015). You can watch him perform at 1:55.
KH: I’ve seen people at the end of your classes, and they are incredibly thankful for whatever difference they have felt from the beginning to the end. It might be something they learned. It might be something they got out. It might be something they saw, but there’s extreme gratitude there.
SE: I didn’t really understand that gratitude when I first came into it.
It was an “I want to make something of myself, and I’m going to do my thing, and I’m gonna make you like it.” When I started this journey, I got value more from the impression that I made on the people that I taught. It was like, “Wow! People like my work.” I want that feeling continuously. I want to do it more, so I’m going to make more bodies of work, so I can do this more often, get that feeling and share my work.
Then as I got older, it really started to shift because through my journey, I could see that I was really impacting people on an emotional level and not just a gratitude level like “Thank you for class, thank you for teaching me how to dance,” but “Man, the work that you’re making is affecting my life.”
Then from that moment, I realized I now have the power to impact them in a positive way, not through just my life but how I teach or how I guide or how I narrate the class. My goal eventually became to create an environment and experience that people can feel something and feel alive when they’re doing it. Hopefully, by the end of my class, they will be moved to be so inspired that they want to do something for someone else.
Hopefully, by the end of my class, they will be moved to be so inspired that they want to do something for someone else.
As I got older, it became this more rounded circle of, “Man, I do this because I love to create and I love watching you break through barriers and feel something, because I can feel something from you, and you can feel something from me.”
This sort of reciprocation. This hope of “Man, maybe you feel something so much, that you want to do something for someone else.”
KH: Yeah, chain reaction.
SE: Yeah, and I love that.
What Shaun taught me
Shaun reminds me of what makes working with people face to face both intimidating and intriguing: we don’t know what’s going to happen. I can plan all I want. I can design the space. I can choreograph every step. But at the end of day there’s still an unpredictable human element.
Kevin: “This hotel room smells nice.” Shaun: “Yeah.”
In the same way Shaun might leave 10% of a piece up to chance, we can intentionally design experiences that leave space for interpretation. That individual contribution is significant because it gives people ownership of their experience, making the effects more personal and powerful.
Nonetheless, Shaun also understands the importance of ramping people up. A car can’t split a fence without room to gather speed in the same a way student can’t have a transformational experience without a warmup.
Instead, Shaun’s teaching style offers a progression that eases students in:
Set the intention
Facilitate exercises to explore that intention
Teach the choreography
Push people
I attended a movement workshop taught by Shaun and Toogie at CAMP in Big Bear, CA.
Together, we did the math. Though he’s in his early thirties, Shaun has already taught tens of thousands of students to move (including me). He’s garnered a following within the dance community and beyond one person at a time.
Yet what impresses me most about Shaun isn’t the scale of his impact, it’s his commitment to positively challenging others. Movement may be his medium, but what he might be one best in the world at is showing people what they’re capable of.
To hear Shaun’s voice, listen to our interview soundbites on this Soundcloud playlist.
Thank you to Shaun for hanging out and spilling your guts. Keep doing what you’re doing. You can learn more about Movement Lifestyle here, and follow Shaun’s adventures on Instagram at @shaunevaristo.