Two Grand Rapids Ballet dancers have found love and passion together on the very same stage.
Nicholas Schultz, 32, and Laura McQueen Schultz, 34, met when they were kids in the junior ballet program at Grand Rapids Ballet.
“There’s only so many boys, so she was going to know who we are,” Nick said.
The couple performed in the Nutcracker together in 1996 when they were kids, but the romance didn’t start until after Laura graduated college, moved across the country and made her way back to GR Ballet. They had been friends for some time and just fell into the relationship naturally, they said.
Since then, both dancers have traveled across the country to perform, while also working with the Grand Rapids Ballet the entire time. For the last four years, Nick and Laura ran Young People’s Ballet, a company in Flint.
“On the weekends that we weren’t performing, we would drive over there and work with our girls and put on three programs a year,” Nick said.
Now that the couple has a daughter, they’ve handed off that responsibility, but Nick still serves on the board.
The duo has now been with the professional company in Grand Rapids for 15 years, with both working full-time. They started dating three years in and got married four years after that, now with a one-year-old daughter, Arya.
“We’re a very rare couple,” Nick said.
“We are together all the time,” Laura said, agreeing. “Unless we’re in different rehearsal rooms.”
“And that’s how we want it,” Nick said. “Since we started dating, we spend the majority of all of our time together and that works for us.”
Laura said some couples ask them how they do it and she just tells them it’s all she’s ever known.
“We are lucky to be a couple that also works well together and fits well together in the dance world,” Nick said.
Nick and Laura are now both lead dancers in the upcoming show Black and White: Swan Lake, a GR Ballet performance that puts a contemporary spin on the classic. Nick and Laura perform the main pas de deux, a dance duet, together in the show.
“We can rely on that white swan pas de deux being all about trust,” Nick said.
“And giving in to the other person,” Laura added.
“It’s about this guy finding this woman and her not necessarily at the beginning wanting to go,” Nick said.
Eventually, Laura “gives in” to Nick, culminating in a kiss.
Dancing as a pair, Nick and Laura said they don’t have to worry too much about being in character.
“What makes it nice is you don’t have to act,” Nick said. “You pull on more from your real life and the real connection I have with her. I can look at her and see the moments that are the best moments and if it’s supposed to not be (that), I can see the moments that are really tough between us.”
Because of this connection, the creator of Black and White, Mario Radacosky, also produced Romeo and Juliet a few years ago specifically around Nick and Laura’s ability to dance well together.
Nick and Laura said their relationship has been so successful not only because they are very much alike, but because they work hard at their relationship.
“We got some great advice when we first started dating that was: ‘Never go to bed angry,’ Nick said. “Relationships take work, just like what we do in our profession. You can’t coast.”
“And you don’t always have to see eye-to-eye,” Laura said. “But you have to be ok with not seeing eye-to-eye on some stuff.”
Thanks to this success, Laura finds it hard whenever Nick has to leave for long periods of time — especially since they’re together so often.
“We are best friends,” Laura said. “It’s really weird.”
