He reportedly is so brilliant that he started taking college classes in fourth grade, and graduated from law school at age 22.

His sister is so brilliant she got a full scholarship to study physics at Texas A&M University.

So it would seem a predictable conclusion that Alexander Collen, 25, and Samantha Collen, 22, formerly of St. Cloud, Minn., would now be big-time stars somewhere in a courthouse and laboratory, respectively.

But that didn't happen.

Samantha Collen left her physics, and her scholarship, half-way through her engineering program. Alexander Collen graduated and then turned away from a law career.

They left all that for what they both thought they were supposed to do with their lives: dance.

"I always wanted to dance,"Samantha Collen said recently. She recalls that her dancing need started after seeing a performance of the Houston Ballet at about age 2

The Northern Plains Ballet Company has 11 professional dancers under contract this season, and the Collens are two of them. Northern Plains' artistic director, Anthony Noa, spotted them when the Collens were competing in Varna, Bulgaria, at the 2006 international ballet competition, considered to be the ballet Olympics.

"They looked great on stage," Noa said.

Alexander Collen remembers being told Noa liked them because on the dance floor they were "exciting and confident and technically very strong."

Noa said the two quiet, thoughtful people have a calming effect on the rest of the Bismarck company.

Samantha Collen has trained with Stroia Ballet Studios, Makaroff School of Ballet, Ballet Arts Minnesota, Galveston City Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and was principal dancer at Stroia Ballet company. Her brother, whose resume includes dancing with Ballet Arts Minnesota and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, aspires to be a choreographer and run a ballet company. He has choreographed a piece for Northern Plains' upcoming show, "Mozart to Metallica,"which features new works, most of them, leaning toward the modern dance art form.

Alexander Collen uses German techno music and has a male ballet dancer in tennis shoes take laps around the dance floor, while a much smaller female ballerina is doing other things, and at one point puts on the male dancer's too-big shoes and begins dancing in them.

It was two years ago that ballet became full-time for the Collens, something that they'd been studying for about 20 years, in addition to other life pursuits.

Their interest began when their mother, Lynn Collen, who knew nothing about ballet, took them to a Houston Ballet performance because it was a show geared toward children.

"It was serendipity,"she said about her taking them to the ballet. It was the spark.

"They were mesmerized," said Lynn Collen, of St. Joseph, Minn., a college instructor at St. Cloud State University.

From that day forward, she said her kids danced everywhere, even down grocery store aisles.

Lynn Collen said she knew early on she was going to have some mountains to climb with these two children when, at a birthday party, she was alerted to a problem with her children. She recalls walking out into the backyard to see that Alexander, about 4 or 5, had climbed up a tree and was about 25 feet off the ground. And his sister was walking across the top bar of a swing set, about 14 feet up, in her dress and patent leather shoes. They waved and said, "Hi, mom."

She acknowledged them and then walked back into the house to help with the ice cream.

She said she reacted that way because she always had confidence in her children's abilities to adequately assess what they were capable of doing. She doesn't want to disempower them in any way with negative reactions.

"I don't want to hold them back."

Lynn Collen would like to say she didn't have any inner struggle at all with her two brilliant children turning to ballet for a living. But she can't.

"It is a struggle as a parent. You know the realities of our world, especially in America,"she said. "… But I'm at peace with it. It's hard to explain."

She said they both have a good education, and she thinks they're doing what they were meant to do.

Nathan Powell, 21, of Regina, Saskatchewan, another Northern Plains dancer, said he has known of siblings who both dance, but not for the same company. To have both dancing at Northern Plains is "definitely unusual."

And Powell said he's noticed that they work well together. "They known each other so well."

He can, however, think of something bad to say about Alexander Collen. Four of the company's dancers have joined a curling league, and he blames Alexander for a recent loss, he said and laughed.

If they had won the game, it would have been a new thing. They've lost all their curling games, about 10 of them, Powell said.

And, surprisingly, the dancer team apparently has a reputation for falling on the ice more than any team. Blame passion.

"We get so into it,"Powell said.

Off the ice, things are quite different. Samantha Collen is reportedly a physical force on the dance floor.

"The first time I saw her dance, I just thought, 'I'm not believing what I'm seeing'," said Sandy Wells, a former jazz dancer and now author and photographer in Galveston, Texas.

"She flies through the air like a gazelle. … I was just spellbound," said Wells, who has used Samantha Collen for photography projects.

Wells, a long-time ballet afficionado, says that based on the many ballets and ballet competitions she has seen, she expects Samantha Collen to be one of the nation's top ballet dancers someday if she gets into the right company.

The Collens have their competitive moments, but both think the other is the better dancer. Samantha Collen is in awe of her brother's jumps and his ability to become the character on stage. He's in awe of her physical strength, "the power behind her moves."

Samantha Collen said she doesn't consciously think about physics, forces and torque, while on the dance floor. But she said she thinks her mind probably is calculating the mathematics when she's out there.

In addition to people in the local dance scene, she and her brother are known on Third Street - at about every fast-food joint on that street, and on other streets, like Burger Time on Main Avenue.

Give Alexander Collen sugar and a good burger and he's happy, his sister says. And she is a frequent co-eater.

But at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, they'll be on Sixth Street at the Belle Mehus City Auditorium.

Five choreographers are using the Northern Plains Ballet professional company members to express the emotions they feel from five different composers.

The central piece will be a premiere work to Mozart's "Requiem," choreographed by Roy Gan, who has danced with the David Taylor Dance Theatre in Denver. The piece is more modern dance than ballet in this saga of one man's journey through life and death.

Other works include new choreography in the modern-dance vein by Alexander Collen; and by Robert Greer, the company's ballet master; and by Alysia Klein, a Northern Plains dance instructor.

Companies that stick with just classical ballet won't survive, Powell said.

But the show will end with a bit of more classical ballet - a remount of Noa's choreography to Tchaikovsky's "Souvenir de Florence." The music ranges not only from Mozart to Metallica, but even includes more avant garde works by such artists as Thievery Corporation, Witt Joachim and DJ Shadow.

Creations by local artists Michele Lindblom, Brian Hushagen and Lydia Richez-Bowman will be projected onto the back scrim of the theater and provide the scenic backdrop for the choreography.

Tickets for the shows are available at the Northern Plains Dance Kiosk at Kirkwood Mall next to Starbucks. Reserved tickets range from $18 to $24 for adults, with discounts for students, seniors and children 12 and under. Tickets for general admission are $10 each and are on sale at Eckroth Music.

For more information, call 530-0986.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)