Lainie Sakakura is recipient of the 2015 Joe A. Callaway Award for Outstanding Choreography and 2002 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Choreography. As a Broadway performer, she performed exclusively in original casts: Chita Rivera The Dancer’s Life, Flower Drum Song (revival), Tommy Tune’s The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, The King And I (1996 and 2015 revivals), and Fosse (dance reconstruction & onstage dance captain). Other NYC performing credits: Ballet Hispanico, Metropolitan Opera, City Center Encores! 1994 Sakakura became the second Asian NYC Radio City Rockette following Setsuko Maruhashi, the first Rockette of color hired in 1985. 

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Sakakura is a NYC based writer, director, choreographer, teaching artist, advocate for cultural diversity, inclusion, and education. Co-founder of Rockettes of Color Alumnae, co-conceived and wrote BCEFA’s Red Bucket Follies Opening Number at the New Amsterdam Theater celebrating Flower Drum Song’s 60th Anniversary & Asian Americans on Broadway. Currently developing Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a musical adaptation of New York Times Best Seller, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.