He walked into a Michael Jackson audition with no agent. Three decades later, he is a two-time 2026 World Choreography Award nominee, a six-time Emmy nominee, and a director. Thirteen years after our first conversation, Dance Mogul Magazine celebrates the work — and what it means for the dancers coming next.

By Dance Mogul Magazine  |  Featured Choreographer  |  October 2026

Some careers are measured in credits. Jamal Sims’s is better measured in rooms — the ones he walked into uninvited, the ones he learned to run, and the ones he now opens for other people.

In 1992, a young Los Angeles dancer found an audition notice for Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” in the newspaper. He had no agent. He went anyway, and he booked the job. That decision — to show up before anyone had given him permission — sits at the beginning of one of the most varied creative careers in entertainment: film, television, tours, award shows, live concert spectacles, documentaries and, now, feature directing.

This fall, that career earned two more honors. The 2026 World Choreography Awards nominated Sims in two separate categories — Motion Picture for A Very Jonas Christmas Movie and Television Award Show/Special for The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl. Recognition across two different mediums in the same year is not a coincidence of timing. It is evidence of range, and of a working method that holds up wherever the camera is pointed.

Dance Mogul Magazine is not discovering Jamal Sims this week. We first sat down with him in 2013, during the Step Up era, and closed that conversation by saying we looked forward to having him on our cover. We profiled his career again in April 2026. This feature is the third chapter of that record, and our way of keeping the 2013 promise: a dedication to the work, an honest account of what he has achieved, and an argument about what his path means for every dancer wondering where a life in dance can lead.

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Chapter 01

Two Nominations. Two Mediums.

The World Choreography Awards announced its 16th annual nominees on September 30, 2026. Sims appears twice, each time alongside the associates the Awards list with him on the nomination itself. The ceremony takes place Sunday, November 8, 2026, at the Avalon Hollywood.

▶The Lion King at the Hollywood BowlOfficial Disney+ video  ·  opens on YouTube

Sims answered the news publicly with gratitude — and with names. He thanked every dancer, associate and collaborator who helped bring the work to life, credited Kai Martinez and assistant Ryan Maw on the Jonas film, and credited Martinez, Will B. Bell and assistant choreographers Reina Hidalgo and Asiel Hardison on The Lion King. Then he summed it up in four words.

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Chapter 02

We Have Been Here Before.

On June 6, 2013, Dance Mogul Magazine published an exclusive conversation with Sims while he waited on word about the next Step Up audition. He was already one of the most sought-after choreographers in Hollywood. What he chose to talk about was opportunity.

Asked what he would tell an 18-to-21-year-old dancer with no formal training but enormous passion, he did not hedge. “JUST COME!” he told us. He had watched dancers like that wait for hours at auditions, take the floor when their turn finally came and outshine more polished competition — not because of training, but because of passion. Then he told his own story: the newspaper ad, the missing agent, the Michael Jackson job.

He compared watching dancers to hearing a hit record: two people can perform the same steps, but only one makes you feel something you cannot shake. That standard — feeling over flash — is the thread running through everything that follows.

And he told us what he hoped the work would do. He wanted audiences to understand that dancers are rarely only dancers — that many can act, sing and create — and he hoped the pieces he was making would “stand the test of time after we’re gone.” Thirteen years later, the industry is still nominating that work. We are still writing about it. That is what lasting looks like.

From the DMM Archive  ·  Three chapters of one record

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Chapter 03

The Self-Taught Foundation.

Sims is a self-taught dancer, and he is from Los Angeles — “That’s where I’m from,” he told us in 2013, wishing aloud that he could one day shoot one of his dance movies at home. He has named Bob Fosse, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Michael Jackson as influences, a lineage that explains a great deal: the precision of the old Hollywood musical, the storytelling of the stage, the electricity of pop.

“Remember the Time” was his first audition and his first professional job. The very next audition, by his own account, ended in rejection. He kept auditioning. He worked as a dancer on numerous projects before his first break as a choreographer arrived on Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna.” From there, the music world opened: music videos and stage shows for Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Usher, Outkast, Gloria Estefan and the Spice Girls, and later Miley Cyrus’s Wonder World Tour, which he both directed and choreographed.

Then came the dance that still follows him onto every set. For Hannah Montana: The Movie, Sims created the “Hoedown Throwdown,” a routine built to be learned by an audience — and it is still being learned, by a new generation, on social media.

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Chapter 04

Three Decades, One Timeline.

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Chapter 05

By the Numbers.

Awards measure the craft. Box office measures the reach. Studios do not hand a movie’s biggest moments to a choreographer they are unsure of, and the films below carried Sims’s choreography to audiences on every continent.

Worldwide gross  ·  bars drawn to scale

Worldwide theatrical gross, not adjusted for inflation; figures belong to the films and their studios. The five Step Up films alone total about $669 million. Not counted: Hairspray (2007, about $203 million worldwide), where Sims was one of the assistant choreographers to director-choreographer Adam Shankman.

The other measure of scale is trust: the artists, directors and producers who put their biggest moments in his hands.

Music

Michael JacksonMadonnaJennifer LopezUsherPrinceBritney SpearsMiley CyrusOutkastGloria EstefanSpice GirlsCiaraSean PaulJonas Brothers

Screen & Stage

Will SmithZac EfronJennifer HudsonRuPaulShania TwainMartin ShortJosh GrobanH.E.R.

Directors & Producers

Guy RitchieKenny OrtegaAdam ShankmanJon M. ChuOprah Winfrey

A name list is not the point. The point is what it took to be trusted by all of them: the same self-taught dancer who answered a newspaper ad, delivering on every stage from a Las Vegas showroom to the Hollywood Bowl.

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Chapter 06

Three Worlds, One Voice.

The nominations make an argument on their own: the same choreographer can be recognized for film and for a live special in the same season. Look at three of his recent projects side by side and the range comes into focus.

Film demands that movement survive the edit. A concert spectacle demands that it read from the back row and through a lens. A weekly series demands that it work for performers who did not train as dancers. Sims has learned to change the language without losing the accent.

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Chapter 07

The Record, Accurately Told.

The Television Academy lists six Primetime Emmy nominations for Sims’s choreography. He has not yet won one — and we say so plainly, because accuracy is a form of respect. Six nominations in four years is its own statement.

World Choreography Awards. Before 2026, Sims was nominated twice in 2023, for 13: The Musical (with associate Nicky Andersen) and Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl (with associate Kai Martinez) — which means Martinez has now stood beside him on three WCA-nominated projects.

Outfest 2018. When the Beat Drops, his first film as a director, won the festival’s Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize, cited for its heart, energy and triumphant spirit.

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Chapter 08

The Camera Moves Too.

If there is one move in Sims’s career that young dancers should study, it is the one into directing — because nobody handed it to him. He shot the first fifteen minutes of When the Beat Drops, his documentary about the Atlanta dance style known as bucking, with his own money. Only then did the producers at World of Wonder join him. The film went on to win at Outfest and premiered on Logo.

Directing work followed: an episode of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, the series he choreographed from start to finish, and the stage productions of Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl and The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl. Now he is set to make his narrative feature directing debut with Major, a 20th Century Studios dance drama about a ballet prodigy who joins a struggling majorette squad at a fictional Atlanta HBCU, produced by H.E.R., Oprah Winfrey, Mara Jacobs, Scott Sanders and Carla Gardini.

▶Grease: Rise of the Pink LadiesOfficial series trailer  ·  choreographed by Sims, who directed an episode  ·  opens on YouTube

Choreographers have always directed in practice — deciding where the eye goes, how long a moment holds, what an audience should feel and when. Sims’s path makes that skill visible, and makes it a title.

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Chapter 09

The Names Beside His.

Audiences experience choreography as a few minutes on screen. Behind those minutes are weeks of concept work, rehearsals, revisions, camera blocking and teaching — and a team. Sims made a point of putting that team’s names into his moment. We are doing the same.

Sims and Will B. Bell have talked about exactly this in public. In a March 2026 episode of Dana Wilson’s Words That Move Me, the two discuss how choreography teams form, the real differences between assistant, associate and co-choreographer, and why the right credit changes the arc of a career.

This is the part of the story that rarely makes headlines. The dancer who once needed someone to see possibility in him now runs rooms where other careers are built. An assistant on one of his projects is a nominee in his own right this year. That is what a door held open looks like.

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Chapter 10

After the Dance Floor.

Dance coverage tends to focus on moments: who won, who was eliminated, who went viral, who booked the job. Dance Mogul Magazine keeps asking a larger question. What happens after the vote, after the competition, after the dance floor? What does dance actually build?

Sims’s career offers one answer. Read it as a path rather than a résumé, and five stages appear. To be clear: none of them is better than the others. Some dancers will perform for their whole careers and should be celebrated for it. Some will teach, produce, build companies or move among several of these worlds. This is one powerful possibility, not the required route.

1. The Dancer

Performance builds everything that follows: musicality, presence, discipline and the ability to make a stranger feel something. Sims’s 2013 standard — can you move me? — starts here.

2. The Choreographer

The shift from executing movement to designing it. You stop asking, “Can I do this?” and start asking, “What does this moment need?”

3. The Creative Leader

Associates, assistants and dancers become a team you are responsible for. Leadership includes saying their names.

4. The Director

Movement intelligence becomes visual storytelling: the frame, the pace, the performance, the whole production.

5. The Door Opener

The person who once walked in without an agent becomes the person deciding who gets the next chance — and remembering what it felt like.

Every time a young dancer walks into a studio, they are learning more than steps. They are learning how to hear music, read people, tell stories, adapt, lead and spot talent. Jamal Sims is proof of how far those skills can travel.

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Chapter 11

Why Jamal Sims Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine

Dance Mogul Magazine has published for more than fifteen years on one conviction: dance is the foundation, not the ceiling. Few careers make that case as completely as this one. Sims began as a dancer, and he has never stopped being one — he has simply kept widening what a dancer is allowed to do.

Choreography is still one of the most undercredited crafts in entertainment. That is why the names on his nominations matter, why the names he added matter, and why accurate records matter. As a father and son Black owned dance publication, documenting that chain of authorship is not a side project for us. It is the work. Read more in our tribute to Black creative directors and choreographers and our history of The American Social Dance Movement.

If his story lands with you, keep going: revisit our 2013 conversation with Jamal Sims, read more conversations with working professionals in Exclusive Interviews, study the pioneers in The Legacy, and explore career thinking in Career and Craft.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Jamal Sims

Who is Jamal Sims?

Jamal Sims is a self-taught choreographer and director from Los Angeles. His first professional job was dancing in Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time,” and his credits include the Step Up films, Hairspray, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Aladdin, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies and RuPaul’s Drag Race, where he is resident choreographer.

What box office have films choreographed by Jamal Sims earned?

Ten feature films featuring his choreography have grossed more than $2.2 billion worldwide combined, led by Disney’s Aladdin (2019) at about $1.05 billion and the five Step Up films at about $669 million. Those figures are the films’ theatrical grosses, not his earnings.

What are Jamal Sims’s 2026 World Choreography Award nominations?

He is nominated in Motion Picture for A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (with associate Kai Martinez) and in Television Award Show/Special for The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl (with associates Kai Martinez and Will B. Bell).

When are the 2026 World Choreography Awards?

The 16th annual World Choreography Awards take place on Sunday, November 8, 2026, at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. Nominees were announced September 30, 2026.

How many Emmy nominations does Jamal Sims have?

The Television Academy lists six Primetime Emmy nominations for his choreography: three in 2023 and one each in 2024, 2025 and 2026. He has not won an Emmy as of October 2026.

What was Jamal Sims’s first job?

He found the audition for Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” in the newspaper, attended without an agent and booked the job. He has described it as his first audition and his first job.

Has Jamal Sims directed films?

Yes. His documentary When the Beat Drops won Outfest’s 2018 Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize. He directed an episode of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies and the stage productions of Encanto and The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl, and he is set to direct the 20th Century Studios feature Major.

Did Dance Mogul Magazine interview Jamal Sims before?

Yes. Dance Mogul Magazine published an exclusive interview with Sims on June 6, 2013, during the Step Up era, in which he urged passionate young dancers to “JUST COME!” to auditions, and profiled his career again in April 2026. This feature is the third chapter of that coverage.

Reporting sources: Dance Mogul Magazine (2013 interview); World Choreography Awards 2026 nominee list; Variety; Television Academy; Outfest; PEOPLE; Awards Buzz; Words That Move Me with Dana Wilson; Deadline via Blavity; The Root; The Playlist; ABC press; MSA Agency biography; Native Son; The Numbers and Box Office Mojo (box office). Videos are embedded from their publishers’ YouTube channels. Assistant credits are attributed to Jamal Sims’s own announcement. Career details reflect verified public reporting as of October 2026.

Jamal Sims Choreographer World Choreography Awards Emmy Nominee The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl A Very Jonas Christmas Movie RuPaul’s Drag Race Step Up Creative Director Dance Careers Black Choreographers Dance Mogul Exclusive

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