DALLAS -- Bright piano notes roll through the studio as Nikki Delk curls her fingers around the ballet barre. Delk lifts her heels to go on pointe while the instructor snaps to the rhythm.
As the music picks up, the instructor transitions to more complicated tendus and dégagés. Delk trains her eyes on the mirror, making minute adjustments to stay on beat. She maintains the focus a scientist might need to pipette a precise amount of liquid into a test tube, or isolate a protein inside a prostate cancer cell.
Delk would know: In addition to being an adult ballet student, she’s a cancer researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas.
