There's a moment in Alex Wong's origin story that feels a little too perfect, too cinematic to be real. He's five years old, gathering his family into a darkened room, pressing a flashlight into his father's hand. "Spotlight me," he commands. Then he dances. He doesn't even know that's what he's doing yet, just moving, performing, demanding to be seen.
photo courtesy of Alex Wong
Today, Wong's audience has expanded somewhat beyond his living room. With 2.8 million followers on TikTok and over a million on Instagram, he's become one of the most visible Asian American dancers in the world. But the path from that childhood living room to global recognition has been anything but straightforward. It's a story punctuated by extraordinary highs – principal soloist at Miami City Ballet, Top 10 on "So You Think You Can Dance," Broadway, film work with Hugh Jackman in "The Greatest Showman" – and devastating blows that would have ended most careers twice over.
"To be honest, I'm not really sure what drew me to dance initially," Wong tells me. He thinks maybe it was watching ice skating on television, probably the Olympics. He tried lessons, but they never stuck. What did stick was this compulsion to move, to perform impromptu shows for his audience of family members in living rooms. "I don't think at the time I even knew I was dancing. I was around 5."
His parents, observing this clear passion, asked if he wanted to take dance classes. His answer was always the same: "No, dancing is only for girls." He's still not sure where that idea came from, only that it was fixed, ironclad in his mind. At some point, his parents made him a deal. Attend a local dance school show and if he still didn't want to dance after that, they'd never ask again.
"There were guys on stage and I think that must have completely changed my perspective on everything and I wanted to dance immediately after that," he says. "To think that if the guys weren't on stage at that very exact moment, I may not have ever pursued dance!"
It's worth pausing here to appreciate the kismet of it all, the improbable chain of events that had to align perfectly. If those male dancers hadn't been performing that particular night. If his parents had pushed harder instead of offering one final, gentle invitation. The whole trajectory shifts on the axis of a single evening, a single experience that rewrote what was possible in a child's mind.
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Growing up in a small Canadian town without many other Asian families meant that even celebrations like Lunar New Year carried a particular kind of visibility. "We had a decently large extended family so we always had family banquets with all of my aunts and uncles and cousins which was always very fun. Definitely got lots of red pockets," Wong recalls. "But we never did anything super out of the ordinary because I grew up in a pretty small town without any Asians, so I was really the only one celebrating."
There's something quietly significant in that detail, growing up as the only one celebrating in a small town. It's a different kind of visibility than the spotlight he craved, the kind that can make a young person either retreat or double down on who they are. Wong, clearly, chose the latter. These days he celebrates with a good Asian dinner with friends and takes in the many events leading up to Lunar New Year. A quieter ritual, perhaps, but one that connects him to something larger.
Wong’s sense of being the only one, of having to chart a path where few like you had gone before, would define much of his early career decisions. At fifteen, he found himself at a crossroads. He was studying all forms of dance, but the practical realities were impossible to ignore. "I just didn't see Asians on TV, in music videos or anything unless I was watching TV from Hong Kong," he explains. "This was one of the reasons that I chose to pursue ballet. I felt that I would have a guaranteed job as long as I could make it into a company, it would be stable, and ballet companies are a bit more colorblind."
He remembers thinking, What, are they going to cast an Asian in West Side Story? It wasn't bitterness, just math. Broadway didn't seem like a realistic option. Ballet, with its relatively more meritocratic audition processes, did. In 2004, he became the first Canadian to win the Prix de Lausanne competition in Switzerland, which led to stints with American Ballet Theatre and eventually a principal soloist position at Miami City Ballet.
The irony, of course, is that Wong would eventually leave that secure ballet contract to compete on "So You Think You Can Dance" in 2010, a gamble that would lead to both his greatest professional triumph and his most devastating setback.
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Wong doesn't ease into the subject of his injuries. When I ask about them, the story comes tumbling out with a mix of clarity and residual disbelief. The first Achilles rupture happened during a "So You Think You Can Dance" rehearsal, mid-season, when he was at the peak of his performance. "It was really tough because I gave up my long-time principal contract with Miami City Ballet at the time to compete on the TV show, so it felt like everything had been immediately ripped away from me."
He spent a full year recovering, wrestling with questions about whether leaving Miami City Ballet had been the right decision, whether the universe was somehow punishing him for wanting more. But he had millions of fans following his journey, sending messages of support. It helped.
Then, exactly one year and three days after the first injury, it happened again. The other Achilles. During an audition for "Step Up 4."
"I remember the moment when it snapped and remember I still wanted to try to book the movie, so I just kind of finished the dance on one leg and nobody even knew. I silently kind of stumbled off after and drove myself straight to the hospital."
Incroyable. Read that again. He finished the audition. On one leg. Then drove himself to the hospital.
"The second time it felt even worse because it was like 'AGAIN?'" he says. "It was extremely difficult as I had JUST recovered and it felt like a sign from the universe that I should maybe quit dancing. The second time, I also didn't have the millions of people watching me and somehow that made it even harder because I felt alone. I remember there were days when I just burst into tears."
Call it resilience or perhaps single-minded determination, Wong was back teaching at large dance conventions, on crutches, in front of thousands of students just two weeks after surgery. He auditioned for American Idol and made it to the Hollywood semi-finals. He worked on his acting and singing, which led to his Broadway debut in Disney's "Newsies" just months later. His second injury healed faster, as if his body had learned the drill.
"I feel like everything happens for a reason, and for the better, so I just had to trust that this was in the cards for me for some reason and let it be and not waste any time…Nowadays,I honestly try to not approach it any differently. I don't want to be afraid when I dance, or afraid I'll do it again. I can't live in fear when I'm dancing, so I just say to myself, well if it's supposed to snap, it'll snap and that'll just be what it is."
It's a statement so matter-of-fact, so devoid of melodrama, that you almost miss how radical it is. This is someone who has stared down the thing that could end everything he loves and decided that fear is more limiting than the injury itself. This is the sort of resilience that looks like recklessness until you understand it's actually a form of radical acceptance.
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Today, Wong's practice looks nothing like his ballet company days. "When you're in a ballet company you are constantly training. You take ballet class almost every single day and you're so attuned to every little piece of muscle on your body. If you take 2 days off, you can feel it, notice it." The rehearsal days were eight hours long, performances stretched to three. It was, in a word, punishing.
photo courtesy of Alex Wong
His training now is less rigorous because the work demands it. Dancing on camera is generally shorter, more concentrated. He's added upper body muscle because it reads better commercially. He's not in "ballet shape" anymore, though he misses how strong his body felt then. When he shot a season of "Étoile" on Amazon Prime recently, getting back into ballet shape was "interesting,” perhaps a polite way of saying brutal.
Something that still resonates from his years in ballet: the strict culture of warming up properly, of treating the body with care and precision. "Some of that is ingrained in me, and therefore I feel like I've been able to sustain my body a lot better than other dancers that are dancing commercially where they are feeling a lot of pain in their mid 20s." At nearly forty, Wong is still dancing at a level that would exhaust people half his age.
He's worked across an improbable range of mediums, including classical ballet, contemporary, Broadway, television, film, commercial work. Each discipline teaches something that translates, sometimes in unexpected ways. The precision he learned in ballet helps everywhere. "They all sort of help each other in one way or another." The real advantage isn't technical cross-pollination so much as the fundamental discipline ballet instilled – to show up, take care of the instrument, and treat the craft with the gravitas it deserves.
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With his infectious personality and viral, bite-sized dance videos, Wong has grown an audience of around 4 million across TikTok and Instagram. "I can't believe that people follow me and want to see what I do. Social media was something that I never really expected to happen because it isn't something that any of us grew up with." Now millions of people watch his videos, a fact he describes as simply "a weird thought."
"Being able to share my craft, humor and dance with people from all of the world and having a platform to do so is something I definitely don't take for granted." People approach him on the street, tell him they feel like they know him, like they're friends. "And in a sense, they do. They see a lot of my steps and missteps."
It's a new form of intimacy, both beautiful and slightly uncanny, that there are millions of strangers who've watched you stumble and succeed, who know your rhythms and humor. It's a kind of visibility that would have been unimaginable to that five-year-old with the flashlight, but perhaps not entirely unfamiliar in its essential quality of performing, being seen, just on an exponentially larger scale that his family’s living room.
When I ask about projects he's proud of that didn't get much attention, he mentions a Trident commercial called "phone keys gum.” "That project was so silly and I just had a blast on set" and a Christmas movie called "Who Is Christmas Eve?" where he was “just” an actor, not a dancer. "It was interesting being on screen for things other than movement and it was really fun. I was super proud I did that."
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By 2010, when Wong decided to compete on "So You Think You Can Dance," things had started to shift. He'd begun seeing more Asian faces on television, which gave him "the confidence to know that it was the right time." The messages poured in with parents telling him their children had never seen an Asian dancer on TV before, thanking him for inspiring them. "It meant a lot to me to see those messages and I felt I had a lot of support from the Asian community."
The progress is real, Wong is living proof of it. So are the limitations. He's candid about the mathematics of tokenism. "On most jobs these days, they need to have a 'token Asian.' So in an audition I do have to make sure I'm the best Asian in the room. Sometimes it feels like a leg up, but then you're also only fighting for one spot."
Sometimes he walks into an audition and sees no other Asian dancers. Sometimes there are a few, and the response is almost reflexive. "You feel like wow! There's so many of us!" Even in scarcity, there's celebration. "It's definitely gotten better but I think there's of course still a ways to go."
He's describing the reality with clear eyes sans bitterness nor naivete. You're the best Asian in the room competing for the one Asian spot. It's better than invisibility, but it's not the same as true equity. Wong doesn't dwell on what's missing. He celebrates what's there, however modest. It's another form of that radical acceptance, to refuse to let limitations dictate the terms of engagement.
When I ask what advice he wishes someone had given him earlier, his answer is immediate and makes me laugh: "Do more hip hop, everyone is going to be doing it in the future." It's the most Alex Wong answer possible: practical, funny, and probably absolutely correct.
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Finally, I ask him the question Earth Therapeutics asks everyone: What's one daily habit or routine practice that has made a meaningful impact in your life?
"I wouldn't necessarily say I have a daily habit or routine. I think my life is basically the opposite of routine as things are always changing, and honestly, I love it like that. Things stay exciting." Staying close with his friends keeps him grounded. "I don't have a massive circle of friends, but I have a close-knit circle, and they keep me happy and sane. It's really important to me."
photo by Stephanie Turci for Earth Therapeutics
"Also, not sure if this is a great habit, but I love drinking boba, ha!, so sometimes that can be a daily habit. I usually get it with zero sugar though, and often lately have been getting it without the tapioca, so that is my guilty pleasure, and it makes me happy!"
Boba with zero sugar and no tapioca. It's almost aggressively anti-indulgent, the guilty pleasure stripped of everything that makes it guilty. Perhaps that’s the point? Wong has spent his entire life in pursuit of joy, the feeling of getting lost in dance that can't be replicated by anything else, while also being utterly pragmatic about what it takes to sustain a body and a career and a life.
"In terms of it evolving over the years, I think as you work hard as any elite professional athlete, sometimes you develop a bit of a love-hate relationship with the craft and it can be so difficult at times," he says. "You don't necessarily love it every day or every moment of it, but you definitely still love most of it, otherwise I would have stopped. I've had my ups and downs, but I've noticed that throughout the years, in the end, dancing still brings me a lot of joy unlike anything else. There are so many times where I just get lost in the dance, and the feeling can't quite be replicated with anything else."
That's the clear through-line in this improbable story where a five-year-old who didn't know he was dancing, who just knew he needed to move. He demanded the spotlight not out of ego but out of pure, irrepressible joy. He learned to be visible in a small town, he chose ballet because it felt safer, he then leapt toward the riskier path anyway. He snapped both Achilles tendons and kept dancing. He built a following of millions but stays grounded with a small circle of close friends and a daily boba run.
"Spotlight me," little Alex said and the world eventually obliged. The truly remarkable thing is that even now, with millions watching, Wong seems to be dancing for the same reason he always has. There are gorgeous moments when he gets lost in it, and that feeling can't be replicated by anything else. Not by fame, not by TikTok followers, not even by zero-sugar boba.
Though the boba certainly doesn't hurt.
