One morning 11 years ago, Laura Halzack '03 realized she just couldn't make herself put on the pink tights and toe shoes. She wasn't quite certain how she had reached this point, but something she had loved doing for almost as long as she could remember no longer felt good. Now, in the midst of her first year at one of the top dance conservatories in the country and well on her way to achieving her lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, she didn't know who she was in that dream anymore. She did know that she had to make one of the toughest phone calls she'd ever have to make.

A s a young child, Halzack had a number of the qualities that could point to a successful career as a dancer. She was eager to please her teachers—she's never forgotten the time her teacher scolded her for chewing gum while doing somersaults—and, as much as her parents tried to temper the trait, she was a perfectionist. She was also passionate about dance, especially after seeing her first "Nutcracker" at age 6. She loved Clara's dress, the lights, the twirling; and when other girls pretended to be Disney princesses, she pretended to be Clara. But there must have been something else that moved her teacher to offer her private lessons at a young age. Perhaps it was an early sign of that ineffable quality that compels an audience to keep their eyes on one person even when the stage is full of people.

As she grew, Halzack continued to develop not only the strength, flexibility and grace of a dancer, but also the self-discipline and drive. In third grade, she entered the world of competitive dance, where judges whisper running commentaries into tape recorders during performances, and eventually she brought home titles like Junior Miss Dance of New England and Miss Dance of Connecticut. In high school she started attending the Hartford Ballet School. It was like leading a double life. Or, more precisely, fitting two lives into one. She spent the day at her high school, where she took honors classes, and attended ballet school from 4:30 to 9 p.m. weekdays and Saturday mornings. She managed to squeeze in phone time with friends at night before starting her homework. But when her alarm clock would go off at 3 a.m., her mother couldn't help wondering if Laura was missing out on a normal life.

By this time, dancing was already starting to feel like more of a job than a joy. Yet Halzack's identity as Laura the Dancer had taken on a life of its own, and she felt guilty at the thought of doing anything else. A number of her friends had signed up with professional ballet companies directly from high school, but she auditioned for dance programs at four-year schools. She won a coveted spot in the highly structured dance conservatory program at the State University of New York's Purchase College.

By spring semester of her first year, however, Halzack knew she couldn't go on. Despite her talent, discipline and achievements, there was another side to ballet that was increasingly hard to ignore. The body type in fashion for ballet dancers today—sometimes called the Balanchine body—features a short torso, long limbs and feet so curved "they look like fishhooks," says Halzack. She was spending many hours a day in a world of mirrors, surrounded by other dancers who more closely fit the mold. The ballet shoe, it seemed, didn't quite fit, and she never intended to cram her foot into one again. In fact, she thought she would never dance again.

Now Halzack had to tell her parents. She got a knot in her stomach just thinking about it. Her parents, after all, had sat through scores of recitals, cheered her on through competitions, spent thousands of dollars on lessons and tirelessly performed all the background tasks needed to keep not one but two daughters on the merry-go-round of modern-day extracurricular activities. When she reached them by phone, she shed plenty of tears, but Greg and Mary Halzack remained calm. We love you no matter what, they said. Nobody is judging you. Nobody is feeling bad about it. This is your life, not ours. Laura was relieved by their reaction, but now she had to face some difficult questions: Who am I? Who am I going to be? What am I going to do?

What she decided to do immediately was transfer to a larger school in northern New England and start over as a "normal" college student, perhaps majoring in history. When she visited UNH, she fell in love with the campus and the area. Moving to Durham, she lived by herself off campus initially and focused on her studies.

During her junior year, Halzack discovered that a friend from her history study group was a dancer. She started to sit in on professor Gay Nardone's jazz dance class. "I wasn't sure I wanted to dance," recalls Halzack, "but I wanted to be around dancers." Soon she got up the courage to ask ballet professor Larry Robertson if she could drop in on his class every so often. Fortunately, Robertson has an open-door approach to teaching. Several faculty and staff members have enjoyed the opportunity to drop in on his classes when they can, and twice a semester he has a Bring a Boy to Ballet Day in his classes (see story on Page 9). He looks at it as a way to "share the education," but sometimes a young man who drops in to humor his girlfriend gets hooked. And unlike women, who typically come into a college dance program with 12 to 15 years of lessons behind them, men can take up dance for the first time in college and go on to become professional dancers. Abilities developed through sports make them quick studies on the dance floor, and they never have to go on pointe, which requires, says Roberts, pretty much learning to dance all over again.

When Halzack started to drop in on ballet class, she created a stir. "We started thinking to ourselves, 'Where has this girl been?'" recalls Kimberly Lemieux '04. Lemieux was a psychology major who had also decided to quit dancing after high school, but wound up minoring in dance, and went on to dance in a number of Broadway shows. Halzack, who stood out in part because of her training, had grown up in a rural town that had more tobacco barns than theaters, but it was only a 15-mile drive to the Hartford Ballet School, where the teachers were excellent. And strict. "If you've never had a Russian ballet teacher," says Halzack with a smile, "you don't know what intense is." Her instruction at Purchase, she says, had also been excellent, and strict.

At UNH, Halzack found a different energy. It was, in her words, "kind and giving." And she was able to try things out at her own pace. Nardone let her take a choreography class normally restricted to majors, and in her senior year she auditioned for the ballet dance concert. She played a witch in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "I put on the pointe shoes," she recalls, "which was something I swore I would never do again. It was fun!"

Teachers and coaches, like parents, often walk a fine line, hoping to encourage young people who have a dream without creating false hope or inflated expectations. The outcomes can be unpredictable: an extremely talented student may fade for lack of drive, while a less talented but very dedicated student may go on to have a successful professional career. Students with multiple interests and abilities may have an especially difficult choice. David Kent '83 says his parents thought he was crazy when he turned down a job to coach skiing at Middlebury and quit grad school in physical therapy twice before he got his first break as a professional dancer. In 1992, he called Nardone from Europe, where he was touring in "Cats," to let her know he was very happy with the path he had chosen. For the past 11 years he's been the "swing" dancer, an understudy for multiple roles, and dance captain for "Chicago" on Broadway. Jack Hayes '93 also followed his passion for dance instead of his major, hospitality management, and has performed on Broadway in a number of shows, including "Chicago," "Contact," and "Phantom of the Opera."

Nardone says everyone knew that Halzack, a history major who also had other options, could be a professional dancer: "I said to her, 'You have to dance.' There aren't that many people you would say that to, but she was one of those people."

Halzack, however, was still uncertain. One thing she did know was that she was enjoying dance again, and after graduation, she started teaching ballet, which gave her a new perspective on young dancers. "They're fragile little souls," she says, "and as their teacher you're a role model whether you like it or not." Looking back on the whirlwind of lessons and competitions and classes, she says, "Everything's so escalated. Kids become parts of the machine, and we forget that they're kids."

Leaning toward a career in teaching dance, Halzack started taking classes in both ballet and modern dance. She had tried modern dance at Purchase, but looking back, she says she just didn't get it. "In ballet, everything is very 'up' on the beat. In modern, you're dropping your center of gravity into the floor. It's a very grounded way of moving." Now it all clicked.

At the advice of her instructor, she took an intensive summer program with one of the most famous modern dance companies in the world, the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Amidst a dawning realization that she had to dance, she moved to New York in 2004, joined the Amy Marshall Dance Company and found a way to keep afloat financially. During one period, she was on her feet constantly: rehearsing by day, photocopying documents at a bank by night. And she still loved it. She had a new dream now—of joining the Paul Taylor Dance Company. It was a lofty goal, which she hardly expected to reach, but she tried out twice and made it to the final round both times.

Paul Taylor has often been called the world's greatest living choreographer. At 80, he still produces two new dances a year, and his company is more successful than ever, performing at the New York City Center in the spring and then touring for much of the rest of the year. Taylor first became interested in dance in college, and danced with Martha Graham before starting his own company in 1954.

His most famous dance is "Esplanade," which he choreographed in 1975. Against a background of Bach, the dancers dive, slide, roll and flutter across the floor with reckless abandon. In the finale, women race across the stage one after another, each leaping into the waiting arms of a man who twirls, releases her, and turns back to catch the next one. Breath-taking in its bravado, athleticism and split-second timing, "Esplanade" is an embodiment of joy that brings tears to the eyes—and all without a single formal dance step. Taylor is known for creating dances from "found" gestures and movements observed in everyday life.

Halzack's third audition for Taylor, in the summer of 2006, began like the others. At a typical audition, about 400 women try out for one opening. There is no screening ahead of time. No headshots. No résumés. No videotapes. The music starts and on every count of eight, a dancer starts walking across the floor. "I can eliminate half of them by how they walk," Taylor recently told the Washington Post. "They're either too self-assured or not assured enough, or they're just weird."

Halzack passed the walk test, but later nearly fell on her bottom while performing a triple turn leading into a jump. With the heat rising in her cheeks, she muttered something "not very ladylike" and then, when she burst out laughing at herself, Taylor joined in. "Oh, Laura," he chided her, "I know you can do better than that!" To her surprise, she got called back the next day and once again made it to the final round. At the end, Taylor cast his gaze around the room and expressed regret that he could only choose one. Then he turned to Halzack and said softly, "It's you, Laura."

When Halzack reached her father by phone, she could hardly speak. But Greg finally gathered that Laura the Dancer was now Laura the Paul Taylor Dancer. It had been six years since she'd called to say she had to give up dance, and her dad knew she had now found her niche. "She can't not dance," he says. "It's in her soul." And hers may be a soul that is particularly suited to modern dance.

From the beginning Taylor has bestowed upon Halzack a number of the roles originated for his former lead dancer, Bettie de Jong. The press seems to admire Halzack as well; she's been heralded as striking, musical, regal, superb, lyrical, balletic, exceptional and a rising star. Although petite seems a more apt description of her stature off stage, she's often described as statuesque—a reflection perhaps of her stage presence, which Nardone says is something that can't be taught. "It's a combination of who you are, what you are born with and what you do with it." Earlier this year the New York Times called her "the company's most beautiful woman [and] also its most enthralling."

For many young dancers, the dream is all about the magic—the lights, the costumes, the accolades. In four years with Taylor, Halzack has had all of that, as well as the chance to perform in about 10 different countries. And yet, she says, the reality is far different from, and better than, anything she could have imagined.

The shape of her day varies, depending on the time of year and location of the company, but it often entails being on her feet and moving—in a morning "gyrotonic," yoga or dance class; an afternoon "tech" rehearsal; an evening performance—for five to seven hours a day. When the dancers first arrive at a new venue, on tour at home or abroad, they look like a motley crew. In a small ornate theater in Great Barrington, Mass., one spring afternoon, they take to the stage for a warm-up in faded T-shirts and hoodies. There is stretching and yoga posing and leaping and pirouetting going on all at once, and all in silence. Instead of talking to themselves, they seem to be dancing to themselves. For a visitor, the effect is mesmerizing, rather like being in the presence of a very large tank full of tropical fish.

Against this backdrop, the managers and lighting people quietly work out some technical bugs. Finally the tech rehearsal begins with "Piazzolla Caldera," a complex piece set to tango music. Although there are no tango steps in it per se, the mood, the costumes and the moves are so "hot" that audience members can often be seen removing sweaters and jackets at the end of a performance. It seems to be about the underlying sexual attraction and the stylized maneuvers—reminiscent of both the military and the nightclub—between different groupings of men and women. The rehearsal, however, is about going through every move with coordination and precision. Halzack alone is in full costume, since she will be performing a new role for the first time this weekend. In one duet she slides down and around her partner's body like a silky piece of clothing. In the break after the dance is finished, manager Andy LeBeau, who attended UNH in the 1980s and danced in Taylor's company from 1995 to 2005, jumps up on stage to go over some of the rough spots. The talk is technical, spatial and anatomical. No magic. That will happen in performance.

For Halzack, one of the joys of being a dancer, and the one she could least have imagined, is the pleasure of artistic collaboration. Twice a year, Taylor goes into a six-week creative period when he choreographs a new dance. He chooses several dancers and takes them into a mirror-free studio to "make a dance" on them, as they like to say. As Taylor describes and demonstrates what he wants, the dancers try out different moves and eventually a dance emerges, much as a sculpture emerges from a piece of clay. In the 1998 documentary "Dancemaker," LeBeau explains why every Paul Taylor dancer is dying to participate in this process: "I want to see what he can get out of me."

Halzack had an opportunity to play a role in this process two years ago when Taylor choreographed "Beloved Renegade," which was revived this year. The dance is based on the life of poet Walt Whitman (and perhaps Taylor himself), played by star dancer Michael Trusnovec. Halzack plays the poet's muse and guide to the afterlife. Here is one place where her interest in American history and dance intersect; in fact, "dance is history," she says, and every Taylor program includes revivals of some of his earlier dances.

During the choreography sessions, Taylor gave her hints about how to play her character—be cool, sweet, like a mother. But she came to fully understand the work only through performances, she says, when "you don't just do a dance, you experience it." That experience has been described by Trusnovec as "rapturous"; by Halzack, "supernatural." Whitman, a sensual poet who equated body and soul, would presumably have approved.

The overall mood of the dance is dreamlike, and the music, Poulenc's choral setting of "Gloria," is sacred. Halzack appears, serene and, yes, statuesque, in an off-white leotard, her hair piled on top of her head. Her every move conveys not only grace and beauty, but also strength, certainty and inevitability. She is caring—at one moment she supports Trusnovec and rocks him gently—and yet detached. In the final scene, the poet lies lifeless on the floor, while Halzack twirls slowly three times, with one leg arched behind her in a revolving arabesque. The curtain falls.

Except when it doesn't. At a performance in Texas, Halzack was forced to keep spinning as the audience grew restless, unsure whether to clap. She could hear the stage manager back stage calling, "Curtain. Curtain on the stage! Curtain!" Just as her back was about to seize up, the lights finally blacked out.

Usually the curtain does fall, however. And as the protagonist lies on the ground, Halzack's spin tells us that everything—life, spirit, art—goes on. Dance goes on.

How long it will go on for an individual dancer, however, is a big question mark, and physical limitations and injuries can take a toll. Most of Halzack's childhood friends who joined ballet companies have already retired, she notes, "at the ripe old age of, you know, 25." Modern dance is fortunately much more forgiving, and one of Taylor's top dancers recently retired in her mid-40s. Halzack, who is getting married this fall, hopes to keep dancing for some time to come. Eventually, she'd like to attend grad school and teach dance.

In the meantime, Halzack has no regrets about the journey that has led her to this point. Her early ballet training has shaped her physically and prepared her for the difficult balancing and leg-lifting moves that Taylor likes to give her. In her years at UNH, outside the insular world of ballet training and competitions, she was able to figure out who she was and what she wanted to do with her abilities, in her own way, her own time—even her preferred footwear. And in the Paul Taylor Dance Company, that, more often than not, means no shoes at all. ~

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