NEW YORK — When Stanford Makishi graduated from 'Iolani School in the early 1980s, he departed for the Mainland, earning a Harvard University economics degree. Then he took a left turn. He decided to follow his heart, pursuing his boyhood passion — dance. It's a passion that has informed his career.

Makishi became an accomplished dancer and worked with one of America's top modern dance choreographers, Trisha Brown. Today he works for one of the world's greatest dancers, Mikhail Baryshnikov, as executive director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.

The center, a meeting place and performance space for artists from around the world, is still relatively new. Makishi took over a few months ago from Christina Sterner, who opened the space with Baryshnikov in 2005.

Makishi moves quickly when entering the center's modest New York City office space, which boasts spectacular views of the Hudson River. With a small frame and muscular build, he personifies energy in motion. Yet he slows down to greet a visitor with an easy laugh and warm handshake. At 42, he looks younger, with a boyish face, wide brown eyes and bright smile.

"What excites me is the tremendous possibility of this place and its mission to help artists," Makishi said. "We want it to be a creative laboratory, a center, a gathering place where I hope unexpected things can happen."

Makishi spoke warmly about the Islands' influence on his way of doing business. "One thing about Hawai'i that's just a part of me is a general openness that (Islanders) have to things that may be different," he said. "Growing up there made me open in a certain way to things, not even realizing that they were different."

Although New York has been home for nearly 20 years, he says he still misses the Islands.

"I think about it often," he said. "I have a clear picture of what the beach looks like, what the hot sand feels like. I do catch myself missing it. I miss the pace, the beauty, the warm weather and the friendliness of the people. When I do go back, it's never long enough. I find myself wanting to stay."

EARLY START

Makishi grew up in Honolulu with his older brother, Kent, and parents Take, a taxi driver, and Shizuko, a homemaker. (A few years ago, Makishi moved his folks from O'ahu into his second home in northeastern Pennsylvania.) At 11, he started dancing after a ballerina friend suggested he take classes.

Even though he was often the only boy in class, Makishi embraced dance. He spent his own money on classes. At 'Iolani on scholarship, he studied jazz, tap and ballet, and played viola.

"It's a remarkable school," he says. "I'm proud to have graduated from there. It set me on my path."

Dance, for Makishi as a teen, became a serious passion. One summer, the New York City Ballet toured the Islands, and he went to the performance. He left the theater transformed for life.

"I remember the disbelief seeing these gods and goddesses on stage," he said. "I was completely transported and thought these were my idols."

High school graduation followed and then Harvard, where he was recognized as a National Scholar. Makishi assumed he'd enter the business world. Although he continued dancing while attending college, his dream of becoming a professional dancer remained tucked away.

Destiny, however, intervened. He was accepted into the Jacob's Pillow Jazz Project, an internationally acclaimed summer dance festival and school in the Berkshires. This validated his ambition, and it changed his path.

"As much as I loved it — and felt that I absolutely needed to dance — I didn't really know that I was good enough to be a professional dancer," he said. "But when I was offered a scholarship to participate in the Jacob's Pillow Jazz Project ... I started to see things differently."

The choice entailed financial sacrifice and "certainly a huge amount of risk," Makishi acknowledges. "There are no guarantees in the performing arts."

But he knew that if he wanted to dance, he would have to take the leap.

"My time was limited for a serious shot at being a dancer," he said. "So it was simply the reality of the profession, that it is primarily for the young, that prompted me."

A LUCKY BREAK

After the Jazz Project, Makishi returned to Boston and worked with a number of dance companies.

In 1991, he moved to New York City to explore opportunities. He got an audition with famed postmodern choreographer Trisha Brown.

Ever the good student, he researched dance companies by poring over performances on videotape at the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library. Makishi was "delighted and surprised," he said, by videos of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and he started taking classes that her dancers took.

At the audition, Makishi and about 100 other male dancers turned out. Makishi and one other dancer were accepted into the company.

Trisha Brown recalls her first meeting with Makishi vividly: "When Stanford first arrived at my studio, I saw instantly the capability of movement and that he was walking around in an absolutely elegant, pure body," she said. "He was the white page of my dreams. I could start right at that moment with a designing eye to set a new standard in dance. He's a breathtaking guy.

"Stanford just has this beautiful body ... it's like cutouts from a kid's anatomical book, there's so much play in him," she said. "He's solid but without rigidity."

Makishi danced in Brown's troupe from 1992 to 1999, performing some of her most critically acclaimed work. He was a featured dancer in many repertory pieces, and also originated roles in several productions, including Brown's staging of Monteverdi's opera "L'Orfeo."

Then, at 35, he retired from dance, not knowing how long his career would last.

"I had other skills to offer," he said. "I felt very fortunate indeed to have lived the dream of being a professional dancer, and specifically in Trisha's company, and I was simply done with that part of my life."

Upon retiring from dance, Brown asked Makishi to be her development director.

"It represented an ideal transition into administrative work," he said. "Speaking and writing about Trisha, her process, and her choreography was something I could do with sincere passion, so it seemed like the perfect thing to do, and I liked doing it."

He worked briefly at Sotheby's before a friend asked him to become director of creative services at the venerable Carnegie Hall.

Working as an arts administrator at this level was now bringing him more financial security, but Makishi says he's not overly concerned about that aspect of his life.

"Though it's true that I can now eat in nicer restaurants and actually make modest charitable contributions to a few pet causes here and there, it is still my involvement in the performing arts that brings such indescribable fulfillment," he said.

In 2006, Makishi took another leap of faith, making a return to the stage after Brown asked him to perform in her interpretation of the song cycle "Die Winterreise" ("Winter's Journey") by Schubert at the Paris Opera. It premiered in 2002 as part of Lincoln Center's New Vision series.

Brown wanted Makishi to perform in her song cycle because of his physical and intellectual qualities. "He was one of the people who could really move out," she said. "He's precise. He's fully in the moment in the space. He's the most malleable and intelligent of responding dancers."

She also added, "He's very modest. In the context of working in the dance studio, I think it's quite powerful."

Makishi trained rigorously to get back into shape after seven years off the boards.

"I remember being extraordinarily nervous before going on stage," he said. "Once the curtain went up, I enjoyed performing so much — in fact, more than I had since I was a beginner. Maybe there was less at stake; it was no longer my career."

Not long afterward, Baryshnikov tapped Makishi to direct his center.

Makishi is also a member of the Advisory Committee on the Arts at Harvard and has served as a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts.

'ALL THESE GENIUSES'

He smiles widely when talking about working around "all these geniuses" who are warm and down-to-earth.

"To be working alongside Misha, who is one of the world's greatest artists ... " Makishi trails off, then exclaims: "His generosity and warmth and openness to new ways of doing things is just incredible."

The demands of the Baryshnikov center don't leave a lot of time for travel, especially back to the Islands, although Makishi is planning on attending his 25th high school reunion in August.

"I don't get to visit with my 'Iolani friends that often, so if they show up to the reunion, it will be a wonderful opportunity to see them all at once, really like in the old days," he said.

Karen McDonough is a freelance arts writer based in Dallas.