Back on her toes

Three weeks ago, Tara Brenke, 17, and her brother, Xavier, 16, arrived in the U.S. from Haiti with little more than the clothes on their backs. Last month's earthquake had destroyed everything around them — their Port-au-Prince home, their high school, even the medical college Tara was planning to attend next year. Their parents — who survived the quake — decided that it would be best for the teens to come to America and live with a cousin, Erick Brenke, a mortgage banker, and his fiancee, Crystal Pearl, an earth science teacher, in their Island Park home.

After a Canadian military plane whisked them out of Haiti, Tara and Xavier made their way by bus from Montreal to New York. Thanks to generous donations from many community members, Pearl said, they were outfitted in winter wardrobes and given school supplies. Although their first language is Creole and they had attended a French-speaking school, they know English as well. As there is no high school in Island Park, they were quickly enrolled at Lawrence High School were Pearl teaches. The pair is now set to complete their academic year — Tara as a senior, Xavier as a 10th grader — in New York. Pearl said Tara will be applying to colleges in the U.S.

Everything about their new lives seemed to be going well, said Pearl, despite what she described as lingering fear from the quake: They have occasional nightmares, and become alarmed when planes flying over Lawrence shake their new high school.

But Tara, an accomplished ballerina who had studied dance in Haiti since she was 7 —- and was in a dance class when the quake hit — missed her regular ballet classes. According to Pearl, after learning of her situation, Joan McNaughton, artistic director of Leggz Ltd. Dance Studio, offered Tara a full scholarship that is enabling her to take six classes a week at the Sunrise Highway school, including ballet technique, pointe and theater dance.

The generosity didn't stop there. When fellow dance student Jenna Talesnick, a junior at South Side High School, learned that all Tara had brought with her from Haiti was a pair of pink ballerina tights, she and her mother opened an account at the nearby Capezio dance store for Tara's dance supplies. Other students at Leggz have chipped in to help cover the cost of her dance shoes and clothes.

"The smile on Tara's face after completing one dance class was priceless," said Pearl. "I would like to thank Joan and the students at Leggz in the biggest way I can. I don't want their generosity to go unrecognized."

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