A dancer gets her due

Second in a series on Bellmore-Merrick students of the arts.

For four years, 18-year-old Emily Keller led something of a secretive life at Calhoun High School in Merrick. At day’s end, when her classmates shuffled off to soccer or cheerleading practice, Keller darted out of the school and headed to Huntington. Over the summers, she was off to upstate Saratoga.

Keller was, in many ways, removed from the high school’s social scene, and she was given no attention on the loudspeaker during morning announcements. But she says she didn’t mind. It was all for the sake of her art.

Keller is a ballet dancer of the highest caliber, training five days a week after school at the Lynch School of Ballet in Huntington as well as at the New York State Summer School of the Arts at Skidmore College in Saratoga, where she studied with instructors from the New York City Ballet. Among the major productions she has starred in are “The Nutcracker,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Don Quixote.”

Few of Keller’s classmates at Calhoun were aware of her life outside school –– until now.

In cooperation with the Long Island Community Bank Foundation, Newsday and the Long Island Association, the Long Island Arts Alliance recently named Keller one of 20 scholar-artists in an Island-wide competition. Scholar-artists were selected based on their commitment to their art, their talent and their academic achievements.

Suddenly, the Calhoun community became aware that Keller is a truly great ballerina. She made the morning announcements for the first time.

“Dance was never really recognized for me through the school,” she said. “It was my thing.” Through the scholar-artist program, she said, “I fully get recognition.”

Like most Long Island high schools, Calhoun doesn’t have a dance program, so it was hard for Keller to receive attention for her art, said David Seinfeld, the high school’s principal. But, he said, her dance “deserves schoolwide recognition. It’s not just a hobby. It’s something you have to be really committed to.”

Keller said her friends were understanding when she couldn’t hang out after school because she had to practice. She noted, though, “I don’t think they understood the extent to which I was involved in ballet.”