The curtain is drawn. The hum of thousands of people can be heard. Backstage, it is dark, except for the blue work lights releasing enough illumination so the seven dancers can warm up and prepare for their show.

Stretching and going through the pieces he is about to perform, 23-year-old Demian Willette, an ISU alumnus, is shaking with nervous excitement.

One of the other members of the Los Angeles-based professional modern dance company Hae Kyung Lee & Dancers grabs Willette’s hand and pulls him into the group, creating an energy circle. With hands held, one dancer squeezes the hands of the two standing next to him, sending the smallest, quietest form of energy and support around the circle.

Places are called.

Willette takes his spot onstage at the LG Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea, for his first international debut with the company.

“The curtain opens, and I switch to autopilot,” Willette says. “Everything is synchronized, and we begin moving as one unit.”

Leading two separate lives, Willette is not only the youngest member of the international performing company, but also a graduate student in marine biology at California State University in Los Angeles.

The company rehearses between 20 and 24 hours a week, with more intense rehearsals happening closer to performance dates.

“No one there is just in the company, and no one calls in sick,” says Keesha Ross, Demian’s dance partner and member of the company for 10 years.

Ross also puts in a 40-hour week as the First Assistant Treasurer at the Centre Theater Group.

“As long as you are upfront about your schedule, Hae Kyung Lee is understanding,” Ross says. “That is how the company works.”

In order to complete everything, Willette collects his grad school research six days a month, sometimes at 4 a.m.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” says Warren Dolphin, ISU professor of genetics, development and cell biology and Willette’s former adviser. “He has an equal love for both areas. What surprises me is that he is able to do it, but he does have boundless energy.”

The summer before attending Iowa State, Willette went to the Forker Building to learn more about how he could get involved with dance.

“ISU showed me that I could make it as a dancer,” Willette says. “It gave me the confidence to dance, in case I didn’t want to do marine biology.”

While attending Iowa State, Willette was also very active and enthusiastic about his scientific interests.

“You always wondered what he was going to come in and propose next,” Dolphin says.

After Willette started working at The Ark, 118 Hayward Ave., he came to Dolphin to propose the idea of the implementation and upkeep of a small aquarium in Bessey Hall, which Willette was convinced he could get donated. Dolphin just looked at him and agreed, knowing most likely that it wouldn’t happen.

To this day, the aquarium sits in Bessey Hall and is kept up by the Marine Biology Club, which was also founded by Willette.

The reason Willette chose graduate school right after undergrad was because, he says, he knew there was more out there for him to learn.

He selected Cal State-Los Angeles after a visit where he saw a group of people doing a capoeria demonstration. Capoeria is a martial arts form of dance.

“That was where I was sold,” he says.

Within days of being in Los Angeles, Demian did the same thing he did four years earlier. He went to the dance building on campus to see what Cal State had to offer.

In the best of both worlds, Willette has lived the life of a professional dancer for two years, and in August of 2005, he will receive his master’s degree from California State University in Los Angeles.