Hanne Dahl

Previously, she was Yvaine from the movie Stardust. Yvaine was a star, spending millennia hanging out in space and, eventually, watching humans go on adventures. Then some jerk (the king of Stormhold, not that she knew or cared) threw a necklace into the sky and knocked her out of it. She landed in Stormhold and was almost immediately accosted by a man who intended to take her back to the woman he loved to prove his worth. Needless to say, Yvaine wasn't thrilled with this development, but she cooperated, at times, in the hope that he would give her his babylon candle so she could get back up into the sky. But there were witches who wanted to cut out her heart to give themselves immortality, and princes searching for the necklace so that they could be king, and Yvaine found herself on an adventure of her own. Even more surprisingly, she and Tristan fell in love, and they both learned what stars were really meant to do: shine. After defeating the witches, who had killed the last of the princes, it turned out that Tristan was the last remaining male heir of Stormhold. He and Yvaine married, and they ruled Stormhold for 80 years before using a babylon candle--a gift from Tristan's mother--to both return to the sky as stars.

Now she's Hanne Dahl, 33. Hanne grew up in Washington, DC, where both of her parents worked for the government. She went to an international school and otherwise had a lot of opportunities that many people don't. Hanne was a good kid, and worked hard, and was relatively content; she could see herself following in her parents' footsteps and living a good life. It wasn't until Hanne took a dance class for a physical education requirement at Tulane that she knew what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She ditched her political economy major, switched to dance, and took every opportunity she could get, both on and off campus, to dance. Classes, workshops, auditions, performances--she couldn't get enough. She had to work incredibly hard to overcome her late start, especially after she graduated and had less of a support system, but that never daunted her. Dance helped make Hanne more herself: more playful, more committed, more creative, more passionate about everything she cared about.

New Orleans made a good home for her; without a permanent established ballet company or other more formal trappings, the snobby elite dancers moved to places like New York, and Hanne was left with a community of dancers more like her. So she's spent her entire adult life taking dance classes, teaching dance classes, and performing whenever she can. Her favorite students are, inevitably, the late bloomers: the ones whose parents didn't sign them up for dance classes but who begged their parents for those classes because they couldn't stand not take them anymore. Like the boy she had in a class a few years ago who also happened to be in her boyfriend's history class. They called him "their kid" and swapped stories of his progress, and Hanne bought him new dance shoes when he got an A on a test. It was the last really good period she can remember of their ten-year relationship. Last fall she started an MFA in dance at Tulane, and starting this new chapter helped her realize that her relationship with Diego was never going to work. It's been hard, losing Diego and accepting that they weren't going to live the life they'd always thought they would--marriage, kids, the whole shebang--but at least she has an outlet to express all that.

Hanne is currently unaware.