At a fundraising auction 18 years ago, give or take, Debra Lau bid for and won a background role in a Ballet Hawaii production of "The Nutcracker."
"She wasn’t about to get up on stage, so she gave it to me," said daughter Kristen, who was just 3 at the time.
What may have started as a lark has evolved into something no one in the Lau family could have envisioned at the time, sweeping the family from Honolulu to New York to, imminently, far more distant shores.
To prepare for her first role, Kristen began taking ballet lessons, igniting a passion for dance that consumed much of her life.
Several years later, her younger brother Greg was coaxed into joining another production of "The Nutcracker."
"I was a hip-hop dancer," Greg says. "I wouldn’t have said yes if I knew that ballet lessons were part of the deal."
But just like his sister, Greg discovered he had a both a talent and a passion for dance of all forms.
Eager to nurture their children’s nascent abilities, Debra and her husband, Benson, enrolled the two at Mid-Pacific Institute. There both Kristen and Greg thrived under the tutelage of dance program director Paul Maley and instructor Sylvia Yamada-Brown.
"It can be hard because you don’t see a lot of people from Hawaii going forward in the performing arts," Kristen says. "But at Mid-Pac I realized for the first time that I could have a future in dance."
In 2009 the family left Hawaii for New York, where Kristen had been accepted into the dance program at Marymount Manhattan College and where Greg had gained admission to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the school made famous by the film and TV series "Fame."
It had been Greg’s dream to one day study dance at the prestigious Juilliard School after high school. But as quickly as he achieved that dream, he was presented with an even greater opportunity.
In January, Greg auditioned with some 200 accomplished male dancers for one of two openings with the world-famous Nederlands Dans Theater. He leaves for The Hague, Netherlands, next week to start his new job.
"My sister is one of my leading inspirations," Greg says. "None of this would have happened if it not for her and the support we got from our parents."
Kristen’s dreams of dancing professionally have also been realized. She graduated summa cum laude from Marymount this spring and was recently selected to join the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in New York.
"It’s a crazy story," Kristen says, laughing. "This is something none of us could have imagined or planned for. We’re just taking things day by day now and trying to adjust to the new normal."
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Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
