Bryan Sekine

Sushi Chef – Instructor – Fire Performer – Choreographer

Hey there! Thank you for taking the time to get to know me better. This website is my online portfolio, where all of my seemingly random professional experiences comes together.

As of 2018, I have been a sushi chef for 9 years, an instructor for 3 years, a fire performer for 3 years, and a choreographer for 10 years! This year I am adding a new set of skills to my resume: app development! I’ll post an update on this website once my app is published onto the app marketplace.

Here’s a quick break down of my 4 main skill sets:

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Sushi Chef

I got started in sushi back in 2008. I walked into a local sushi bar (who wasn’t even advertising that they were hiring sushi chefs) and asked if they needed a chef. While I didn’t have any prior professional experience, I was familiar with the rolling process and Japanese terms from my childhood – my family and I used to occasionally make sushi at home.

As chance would have it, they hired me! I worked for 3 months in the back kitchen, washing dishes and making rice, before I was allowed to handle the fish. I worked long hours and made a ton of mistakes early on, but after about 6 months I was finally rolling sushi for customers on a Friday night (usually the busiest night of a restaurant).

In 2011, after working at two different restaurants and deciding to expand my knowledge of sushi even further, I started doing some online research and stumbled upon the term “sustainable sushi.” At this point in my life I was starting to realize how much of a negative impact our populations are having on the environment, but for some reason I hadn’t considered the state of our oceans.

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Instructor

In college I studied Video Game Design and Animation. After I graduated I was hired as an instructor for an after school academy that teaches STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). My job was to create a curriculum that would teach middle school and high school kids algebra and geometry using video games. It was a really neat job and it taught me a lot about how to teach all age groups.

After one and a half years at that company, I was recruited to work for an app development company as a technical artist. I spent the next year working for that software development company more as a liaison between the various departments than an technical artist. I learned the ins and outs of the corporate world, the software development industry, and how to translate highly technical terms and processes into verbiage that any layman could understand.

Fast forward a few years and now I create intuitive and easy-to-follow Video Game Design online courses for a company called Pluralsight. As of 2018 I have two published courses with this company and I look forward to making more content for them.

I discovered through being an instructor with the after school academy that teaching is my true passion. Since then, I have gone on to incorporate teaching into everything that I do – I teach live sushi classes, record sushi tutorials to publish on YouTube, teach fire spinning workshops at various flow festivals, and teach live seminars on fire spinning and combat choreography.

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Fire Performer

In 2015 I went to my first fire festival – a 3 day experience where each person attends workshops on how to spin various props during the day and then get the opportunity to spin fire with those props at night. It was a life changing experience for me and set me down the path of becoming a fire performer. Now, 3 years later, I have found myself performing at various local events, teaching at other fire festivals, and entertaining large crowds at music festivals.

For me, spinning fire is a form a moving meditation. It draws me in, forces me to focus on the fire, and allows me to express myself physically in a way that I can share with hundreds of people at a time. It’s a form of pure bliss that I rarely find in other activities.

While I am still considered to be new to this art and to the community, I look forward to growing and contributing in a big way.

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Choreographer

Combat choreography is something that I got into in 2003. I was devoted to learning as much as I could, with aspirations of working in the film industry at some point. I learned how to fight with multiple weapons, how to perform acrobatic stunts, and even helped choreograph a 5 person fight. I learned under industry professionals and traveling performers alike.

After 5 years of performing, I moved on to directing. For the next few years I was responsible for the safety of my crew and the quality of the performance. I helped teach new performers how to choreograph their own fights, write their own move sets, and train them to use various weapons.

But in 2013 I suffered a back injury during a show stunt that changed my perspective on that particular life path. It wasn’t my first injury and it certainly wasn’t my last, but for some reason after 10 years of doing it I realized that I wasn’t as excited to perform or write shows like I used to be.

While I enjoyed my time choreographing fights and helping to write/direct shows, I decided that it was time to move on to a different chapter of my life. Now, I enjoy applying what I have learned from my years of choreography to my flow performances.