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After nearly 20 years of punishing her body with the rigors of ballet, Roberta Wong decided to put aside her "torture chamber" pointe shoes to focus on something else. She started teaching dance classes and took on other miscellaneous jobs while contemplating a future that perhaps would involve photography or biology, the field that she had given up years ago.

By the time the director of Dance Kaleidoscope approached her about four years later with an unlikely proposition, Wong had purged herself completely of the need to dance professionally.

Would she consider joining his modern dance troupe, David Hochoy asked.

Her brain replied, "Absolutely not." Her body, which had suffered through knee surgery, shin stress fractures, numerous rib injuries, bunions and blisters, screamed, "You've got to be kidding."

Instead, she asked Hochoy, "Can I think about it?" "I got the shivers," Wong recalls. "I was like 31 at the time. It's insane to start a new part of your dance career at that age. I didn't think my body would take it. It's high-impact dancing."

While her mind and body battled over the challenges of starting a strenuous professional gig, Wong came across a card that made her ignore them both. The card's message was simple: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a leap of faith. The impact was profound. She decided to accept the contract, starting a new professional dance career at the "old" age of 31.

"It was the start of a whole different healing process... a new renaissance," she says. That renaissance has been several years in the making, and shows no signs of relenting. Wong is among the free-spirited dancers who make up the high-energy, athletic, eclectic and sometimes acrobatic troupe that sets Dance Kaleidoscope apart from other dance companies.

Soaring Seemingly
Anyone encountering Wong on the Butler University campus, where she continues to teach dance, never would guess that she is 36. The dancer, who often wears her long thick hair in one or two ponytails and dresses in frayed bell-bottom jeans, easily blends in with the students as she strides across campus toting a bulging backpack on her petite frame.

On stage, Wong is able to blend in just as well with much younger dancers as they perform the physically challenging moves that characterize Dance Kaleidoscope's unconventional style. However, the seemingly effortless moves that captivate audiences often can be pure torture for the dancers, says Wong, explaining why many dancers retire at a relatively young age.

"You get injuries no matter what you're doing," she says. "Everything you do is inorganic– it's not natural for the body. Whenever you explore a new movement, it's going to be unnatural to the body. That's what makes it so beautiful. You're working against the grain."

Not only are its routines intense, Dance Kaleidoscope has one of the most demanding schedules of any modern dance troupe in the United States, performing 40 weeks out of the year.

Despite those challenges, DK director, Hochoy, was confident that Wong would be the perfect addition to his popular troupe. His bets paid off. Wong so impressed Hochoy that two years ago he promoted her to rehearsal director, a position that requires keeping the other dancers current on the repertoire, understanding all of the parts in the choreography, and some teaching.

Her age wasn't a consideration, says Hochoy, who previously had noticed her professional work with other dance troupes. "She has a wonderful stage presence. Just wonderful," he says. "She's known as a very clean dancer. She strikes wonderful positions.

" Hochoy, who trained in New York with Martha Graham (the legendary dancer who revolutionized modern dance), notes that lead dancers in the more expressive Graham style often are older. He believes that Wong is at her peak in dance. "For artists, it takes some time to pull it all together. That is happening to her right now. She's learning to unleash her passion."

To Wong, the whole experience of working with Dance Kaleidoscope has been like a dream.

"I didn't think I would ever take dance up again," says Wong, who had previously danced with the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet, the Indianapolis Dance Company and the Hosanna Sacred Arts Dance Company. "I gave it up because I was physically and mentally burned out. I was ready to leave it, but a part of me missed it so much."

When Wong accepted the position with DK, she knew she would have to take a more conservative approach in her movements than younger dancers because of the possibility of serious injury. However, you never would guess that Wong is dancing with reserve. During DK performances, she seemingly soars, jumps and flips with abandon.

Talent and transition
Wong is a person quite familiar with doing things out of the ordinary. That she even became a professional dancer is somewhat of a twist of fate. She started taking lessons in her hometown of Davis, Calif., near San Francisco, at age 8.

"My mother was trying to find something for me to do," says Wong, who recalls other students her age getting involved in lessons in violin, horseback riding and similar activities.

However, her parents limited her dance lessons to twice a week to make sure she kept her focus on academics. Meanwhile, her peers were studying dance two to three times more per week.

"My mom always emphasized it as a hobby," Wong says.

That strategy worked. Almost. Although Wong loved dance, she never entertained the idea of dancing professionally. "I never focused on it as if it was anything serious. I had so much focus on my schoolwork. That was the goal," she says.

But Wong's talents eventually won out over the goal.

In a classic case of a friend asking her to audition for a summer program at the Boston Ballet, Wong, around 19 or 20 at the time, readily agreed. She and her friend both made it into the program apprenticeship. Even at that point, Wong didn't allow dance to sway her. Her long-term goals were to find a nice stable job as a biologist in a lab somewhere and settle into a middle-class lifestyle, much like her father and older brothers, all engineers.

However, that apprenticeship with the Boston Ballet led to more and more opportunities in dance.

Wong hasn't looked back, although her decision has had its financial drawbacks. "Dancers have no backup, no excess cash, no HMOs, no 401K or retirement plans," says Wong, who lives in a carriage house of a larger property on the city's Northside.

Yet she describes that lifestyle (that didn't include e-mail until this year) without a hint of regret. As she talks of her dance career, it's clear that she is the one to be envied.

Wong's transition from ballet to modern dance, which she calls "exciting," wasn't a minor one. While the heart and soul of ballet dance and modern dance are completely the same, she says, the shell is quite different.

"Ballet is very vertical. Modern is very not vertical," she says with a laugh. "With ballet, you never touch the floor. With modern dance, you're all over the floor É rolling on it, sliding on it, doing all sorts of unusual moves on it.

"The drive for creativity is different. Ballet follows a rule of standards, a deep sense of reaching the ultimate goal of perfection. With modern dance, the more creative it is, the more beautiful it is." She says modern dance also touches a deeper part of the soul.

"Modern to me goes so much deeper. There's so much more exploration, more vulnerability. You go to places you never thought existed," she says, struggling to express adequately the depth of her experiences with modern dance.

"How do you explain to people that there's something even deeper than a runner's high?"

Performing in Ceremony of Carols, for example, was incredibly uplifting, says Wong, one of the principal dancers in the DK production.

"Part of it was the music. It's so spiritually appealing. When you're on a darkened stage, the space seems infinite because of the darkness É and then you have the bright lights. It sounds so hokey, but sometimes it feels like heaven. It's just phenomenal.

" Dancing professionally again has been an experience that often leaves Wong searching for the right words to describe it.

However, she can attest that performing with Dance Kaleidoscope during the past few years has left her with no doubts that her "leap of faith" was one of the most perfect moves in her dance career.)