Silence, then tears at Louviere hearing: Victim makes special request
April 22, 2015
Rhonda DeHart
April 28, 2015
REMEMBERING ELISSE STINE
From age 6, Elisse Monet Stine knew she wanted to be a ballerina.
That was when she danced in “The Nutcracker,” falling in love with ballet much like the classic’s characters, Clara and The Prince.
So, Elisse’s mother encouraged her daughter, placing her under the tutelage of Andrea Necaise of the Washington Ballet and Acadia Classical Ballet Co.
Elisse learned quickly and soon asked her mother if she could move into more advanced classes with older children.
“Which meant every afternoon for hours,” said Armida Stine, Elisse’s mother. “And I didn’t allow that.”
Armida recalled Necaise called her to the dance studio and said, “You need to get over here and see this.”
Necaise told Armida that Elisse was “exceptional” and that she needed to come to all of her classes.
“She knew at 5 years old that’s what she was doing for the rest of her life,” said Simonne Gros, Elisse’s sister. “She pursued it and, by the time she was 10, she was already getting $30,000 scholarships to attend summer workshops that only the very financially well-off could afford.”
At age 12, Elisse was awarded the only scholarship from the Thibodaux Music Club ever offered to a dancer, allowing her to study at the Champaign Ballet Academy in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
Armida spent the next couple of years shuttling Elisse around southeast Louisiana from ballet school to ballet school, fostering her daughter’s natural talent no matter how much time it took.
It was around this time that Elisse played ‘Clara’ in the New Orleans Youth Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker.”
When she was 13, Elisse won the New Orleans Junior Philharmonic Dance Division.
Elisse was awarded a full scholarship to attend the HARID Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida, for two years, when she was 14 years old. Elisse graduated from HARID two years later and returned to Thibodaux. Further down the road, Elisse would serve as the vice president of the HARID Alumni Association.
After graduating from E.D. White Catholic High School, Elisse earned a bachelor’s degree in family and consumer science from Nicholls State University while teaching classical ballet at Houma and New Orleans schools.
She performed onstage with the New Orleans Ballet Ensemble, the Washington School of Ballet and the National Academy of the Arts.
“She was absolutely fabulous onstage,” her sister Simonne said. “She was always poised. She was always elegant.”
In the world of professional ballet, poise is an important attribute. Simonne said Elisse was attending very prestigious ballet schools where most of the students came from privileged backgrounds. While their parents had to pay tuition, Elisse was there on scholarship thanks to raw talent, which bred envy
“She just turned a blind eye to it and kept on going,” Simonne said.
After years as an accomplished performance ballerina, Elisse began to teach dance full-time. But she never taught at just one school, and instead held multiple instructor positions.
“That was just Elisse,” her mother Armida said. “Even in college, the more she worked… the better she did at school.”
Elisse enjoyed teaching so much she returned to school to get certified in Montessori Method teaching. She taught Pre-Kindergarten at St. Gregory Barbarigo Catholic School. For the last 17 years, she taught ballet at Paddy Danos School of Dance.
“I think she did so well because she was able to put herself on the level of the child,” Armida said. “She thought about these children and the children loved her.”
Elisse’s uncanny ability to relate to children as an adult may have stemmed from an unusually high level of maturity in her youth, loved ones said.
Simonne said her sister would carry a calendar book as a teen, ensuring that all appointments were properly scheduled. Another book Elisse kept with her was her etiquette handbook, Simonne said.
“That was her second bible,” she explained. “She had it all marked out and highlighted, the whole nine yards.”
A family friend trusted in a 10-year-old Elisse so much that she had the precocious girl babysit her six-month-old and five-year-old.
After Elisse’s March 14 death at the age of 40, many friends came forward and told Simonne that her sister shaped their lives and, in some cases, was the only person in whom they would confide.
The outpouring of support on social networks after Elisse’s death appears to follow in that vein. Simonne said visitors were lined for two blocks leading into St. Joseph Co-Cathedral in Thibodaux for the funeral.
But before Elisse made all of those friends, she had her sister, and one of the fondest memories Simonne cherishes is of them playing together, sometimes teasing, sometimes giggling. Simonne and Elisse, just two years apart, were very close growing up.
When it would rain, the two would sit together at the end of the family’s driveway and chat, as the raindrops danced atop their umbrellas. E3
Elisse Stine, an accomplished performance ballerina, teacher and devout Catholic, passed away on March 14. While growing up, Stine was awarded numerous scholarships to study ballet and later schooled many young dancers in the art of ballet.
