Cool kids: She sets bar high for future as dancer

In just a few weeks, Kelsey Piva will begin an adventure that most aspiring ballet dancers only dream about.

The seventh-grade student at Lakeland Junior High School has been accepted into the School of American Ballet in New York for an intensive five-week summer session.

“There are people who audition from all around the world,” said Kelsey. “We work on improving technique and our strength.”

She said the New York school also offers Pilates instruction, ballroom ballet and pointe classes.

Kelsey was chosen after an audition in Seattle earlier this year, and she considers it an honor to have been selected.

“They are really picky,” said Kelsey. “They don’t pick just anybody.”

The school holds auditions in about two dozen cities throughout the United States and accepts videotaped auditions from dancers living outside the country.

Most faculty members at the ballet school are current or past members of the New York City Ballet.

For such a young dancer, Kelsey has an impressive resume, having danced the lead, Clara, in “The Nutcracker” in Spokane last December as well as performing in “Cats” with the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre.

She and other dancers are busy preparing for their next performance at North Idaho College, a culmination of months of hard work.

“We pretty much start getting ready for the performance after the last performance is done,” said Kelsey, who dances at the Ballet School of Coeur d’Alene, where she is one of about seven students in the advanced class taught by Ceci Klein.

Passionate about dance, Kelsey finds it difficult to include much else in her life. She attends ballet class five or six days a week for two hours each day. She also participates in jazz dance competitions as far away as Oregon and California.

When not dancing, Kelsey is busy keeping up her 4.0 grade-point average.

Trying to fit in her schoolwork can be a challenge, but Kelsey meets it. She is enrolled in Strive, a program for gifted and talented students at Lakeland Junior High, and she takes honors-level math classes. She also has found time to participate in the Mars Rover project and Destination Imagination.

Kelsey admires several professional ballet dancers – but two in particular who attended her ballet school and whose careers she follows closely.

Brooke Klinger is a prima ballerina for the Aspen (Colo.) Ballet, and Andrea Cooper dances with the Oregon Ballet Theater.

Kelsey says she looks up to them and believes that she, too, can live that dream.

“I really would like to be a prima ballerina for a big company like the American Ballet Theater or the New York City Ballet,” she said.

Klein says she has no doubt her student will succeed.

“She is a self-motivated child with high goals,” said Klein, adding that Kelsey has all the criteria to become a professional dancer. “New York was just the reward she needed to know she could make it as a professional.”

Although Kelsey says she does not watch much television, she said she does enjoy watching shows such as “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”

“I met the guy who was second place in ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ ” said Kelsey. “He was at one of the competitions I was at.”

During her stay in New York this summer, Kelsey not only will be improving her dance skills, but she also will be watching professionals at work. She plans to attend performances of “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Romeo and Juliet.”

Kelsey said younger girls considering taking up ballet should be prepared for a lot of work and a lot of fun.

“You have to work really hard and set your goals. And then you have to try to attain them,” she said.

But it’s all worth it. “Dance really takes up my life,” Kelsey said. “But that is what I like.”