In high school, ballet dancer Naomi Thien Kim Le’s father, Chinh Le, told her something pivotal: “If you can’t live without it, don’t live without it.” She took his words to heart.

Naomi has now danced professionally with San Jose’s New Ballet Company since 2020. At 23, she feels she still has more to accomplish. “Every year, there’s a new side of myself that unlocks into ballet. I’m achieving more and more despite getting older.”

Chinh Le instructs by example. Both he and Naomi’s mother, Anatasia, are from Vietnam and immigrated to the US in 1980. Their journeys to America, however, were quite different. “In short, she came on the airplane, I came on the boat,” Chinh explains. He attempted to leave Vietnam multiple times before he was successful. The only thing he took with him was his violin. Without a standard American education or fluency in English, he struggled to find musical education opportunities. Despite this, he was determined to become a professional musician. He eventually earned a scholarship at Indiana University. He’s now a violin teacher and a violinist with the San Jose Symphony, which accompanies New Ballet productions.

Chinh passed his passion for music and the arts on to his children. Naomi and her siblings all play instruments and dance with New Ballet. The family even formed a string quartet during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We need the normal things to sustain a life. But art gives people a reason to live,” Naomi says. Her mother echoed this importance in her approach to parenting. “What we were taught as [children] is that art is one of the rare gifts that one can possess. We want our children to explore their gifts.”

Naomi is grateful for her family’s support of her ballet career. “They always made sure I could have food on the table, no matter what,” she remembers, “so that I could comfortably choose and put a strong foot forward with what I wanted to do with my life.” Her connection with her heritage is strong. “My work ethic is from my family and my Vietnamese culture,” she explains. “The food that I eat to have the energy to go throughout my day, to dance, and to teach is really influenced by my culture.”

“Every year, there’s a new side of myself that unlocks into ballet. I’m achieving more and more despite getting older.”

Naomi originally began studying ballet at five years old to help with her coordination. Her parents homeschooled Naomi and her siblings and had them try out many different physical activities. Naomi began dancing as a student with New Ballet’s founder, artistic director, and executive director Dalia Rawson. She’s mentored Naomi’s development from a young student to a professional dancer. Naomi always took her classes seriously, but it took time for her to hone her skills as a true performer. “She was almost a little introverted,” Rawson remembers. “She has been a series of little revelations over the years.” When Naomi was 10, Rawson told her she had the discipline and the body to dance at a higher level. She’s now danced in hundreds of professional New Ballet shows.

Naomi’s approach to ballet is a joyful one. “It’s a human experience. I want to get into that kind of carnal state where, truly, I’m dancing because I’m enjoying life, I’m enjoying what I do,” she explains. “I don’t want to spend my career in dancing stressed all the time.” This approach runs parallel to Rawson’s mission with New Ballet, which prioritizes dancers’ mental health.

Naomi herself majored in psychology at Santa Clara State University. She attributes this partially to her mother, who got her master’s in psychology after working as a pharmacist. She says that New Ballet’s emphasis on mental health was also an influence on her decision. “I think I was just surrounded by a lot of people who cared about other people’s well-being and success, and I just wanted to carry that on.”

According to Rawson, there are two things a ballet dancer needs to elevate their practice: a solid control of classical technique and the ability to embody different roles with that technique. Naomi has both. “She brings moments out of choreography that I’ve seen her dance many, many times,” Rawson shares. “She is on the path to becoming San Jose’s first home-grown, home-trained, and hometeam ‘Ballerina.’ ” “Ballerina” as a title has a specific meaning within the dancing world. The dancer needs to have had at least three main ballerina roles, and one of them must be Giselle, which New Ballet will be doing a production of in 2025. Naomi has already danced main roles in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. “It’s like Hamlet for a female ballet dancer,” Rawson explains. “There’s a very good chance that she will dance that role.”

Follow Naomi on Instagram at naomi_tk_l

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