HAS:
Excellent lines in her petit allegro.
MAKES:
“Story ballets” feel less mechanical and more like, well, stories.
WANTS:
To get into performance art after she retires from ballet.
Maybe you wouldn’t expect a principal ballerina who’s been dancing professionally for 20 years to plop down at Streamline Tavern with a pint of beer in her hand and a denim jacket slung over her shoulders, but that’s just how Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Noelani Pantastico rolls. When asked, she even busted out her “Pantasticos”—custom shoes made especially for her feet by Freed of London—and banged them on the barroom table. She was demonstrating how she “pounds the noise out of her shoes” so that she doesn’t “sound like an elephant” when she leaps across the stage.
Pantastico didn’t grow up in a family of dancers. She’s a Hawaii-born military kid—one of six—whose parents moved around every few years or so until they wound up in Pennsylvania. At 16 years of age, she secured her apprenticeship contract with PNB, but she officially joined the company at 17. She stayed with PNB for a decade, during which period she became a principal dancer known for her incredible technical skills—huge jumps, lots of turns—until she hit a crossroads.
