Todd Williamson’s life is a gruelling dance. One day he’s rehearsing for Karol G’s world tour. The next, he’s in choreography sessions for Tate McRae.

Sleep comes when it can. Flights blur together. Maybe next month he’ll relax.

Before an artist and their dancers step in front of tens of thousands of fans, someone – the choreographer – has to decide where every movement goes.

Williamson has been working with the Colombian singer Karol G, who headlined Coachella this year, alongside Parris Goebel as associate choreographer. He’s just finished creating Karol G’s world tour, which just kicked off.

A warning: this profile on Williamson may contain proper nouns you’ve never heard.

I’m 35 and already out of touch, but I’m told on good authority the artists and groups he’s worked with maintain fanbases and followers that rival any artist you’ve heard of.

Karol G has 70.2 million followers on Instagram, Tate McRae 9.8 million, Rita Ora 16 million, Tyla 13.9 million, LE SSERAFIM 11 million, aespa 16.7 million and TWICE 29.9 million.

Not bad for a boy from Wellington who only started taking dance classes when he was 12.

Obsessed with music videos, theatre and old Hollywood musicals, the young Williamson wore out a collection of Gene Kelly films given to him by his grandmother.

With Gene Kelly starting the fire, Williamson’s mother tended the flames, enrolling him in dance lessons and stoking him with encouragement.

“I was always fascinated by people who had that essence and aura about them,” he tells the Herald from Los Angeles.

As the end of high school neared, Williamson began to think about what to do with his life. He wanted to dance. Professionally.

“I started taking it more seriously,” Williamson says. Then he discovered the Royal Family Dance Crew, started in 2011 by Parris Goebel, whom Vogue anointed the “pop world’s favourite choreographer”.

Williamson knew the Royal Family was where he needed to be.

“My intuition kicked in, I didn’t second-guess it. I moved to Auckland when I was 20, lived there for 10 years, trained with the Royal Family, choreographed there, taught classes and then eventually found my feet later down the track as a choreographer.”

Williamson noticed he was different from the others in the studio. They lived to dance. He got his satisfaction from creation.

“The dancers I was working with were getting a lot of fulfilment out of being on stage and performing,” he says. “When I would teach a class or create my own combo, that was when I found my spark.”

In Auckland, Williamson built a reputation for himself by growing his social media presence.

By the time he touched down in the United States, he wasn’t a nobody trying to make it. He was an internationally recognised choreographer with hundreds of thousands of followers online.

Whereas many aspiring dancers and choreographers head for Hollywood as soon as they can afford a plane ticket, Williamson spent a decade honing his craft in Auckland.

Looking back, he thinks that patience paid off.

“I didn’t want to move to the States without feeling like I had fully established who I was creatively,” he says.

“It was important that I continued to hustle and really find what my voice looked like and what my vocab was as a choreographer before I got here.”

For many, LA exists more as a concept than a real place. It lives in the imagination rather than lived experience. It’s where movies are made, celebrities mingle, executives create stars and where thousands of hopefuls arrive chasing their break.

Williamson says some of the stereotypes are true.

“There’s no place like LA,” he says. “You can really be whoever you want to be here with next to no judgment.”

The city has also desensitised him to “celebrity” in a way he never expected.

“I’ll go for a walk on a Sunday afternoon at the flea market in Silver Lake and I’ll see four YouTubers, five famous TikTokers, a movie star and then a musician. It all happens in the space of an hour.”

For newcomers, the entertainment capital can seem intimidating. Williamson says it is less cut-throat than people imagine.

“There are stereotypes for sure,” he says. “But if you have your head screwed on and you have a good support system around you and people that you can trust, this place is definitely worth it.”

The reality of working at the top of the industry is often less glamorous than outsiders assume.

The scale of the productions can be staggering. Karol G’s Coachella performance involved around 40 dancers and more than 200 crew, and it’s the biggest production Williamson has worked on.

The schedule can be equally intense.

“There’s not really an opportunity to schedule things,” he says.

“You kind of just have to make yourself available.”

Recently, rehearsals for Karol G overlapped with work for Tate McRae. On his days off from one project, he would head straight into rehearsals for the other.

“It just meant I didn’t get a day off for like a month on end.”

Sometimes that means flying across the US, getting off a plane and going straight to rehearsals before catching another flight a few days later.

“Sleep when I can, next plane, another rehearsal.”

The pace can be relentless, but Williamson isn’t complaining. After all, this is what he spent years working towards.

Despite building a career in Los Angeles, for him aspects of New Zealand remains difficult to beat.

He misses the greenery. He misses the fresh air.

Most of all, he misses the coffee.

“I think New Zealand coffee is slept on a little bit,” he says.

And then there is the food.

“The food in New Zealand is top-tier. I truly believe that. I tell everybody I meet from around the world that they need to go to New Zealand and experience the food.”

For now, home is LA and the world is at his feet.