Free Preview: Playmate of the Month May 1988 - Diana Lee

Diana Lee is the sort of woman who pursues her goals with passion. Always has. When she was six years old, she climbed her first piano bench and tackled classical music. Next, she took up the flute and was soloing with the Seattle Philharmonic while her fellow seventh graders were still tootling in the school band. At 17, accompanied by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, she played Mozart's Concerto Number Two in D. "I also ran track and joined the gymnastics team at school - it wasn't as if I skipped all the things other kids did," she says, "but I was always drawn to the self-expression of music and dance." Diana's Chinese immigrant parents endowed her with a work ethic, which she applied to honing her own talents. At the State University of New York at Purchase, where she went to major in music, she became entranced by modern dance, but an instructor told her she was too old to consider that career. Dancers, like tennis players and musical prodigies, start young. "I took that as a challenge," she says, "and made dance my passion." She saw a performance by a dance troupe from the University of Utah, fell in love with the "unaffected grace" of the dancers, packed up and followed them back to Utah. <br> Three years ago, Miss May earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in modern dance from the University of Utah. She still lives in the thin air of Salt Lake City ("a great place to train - when you get down to sea level, you feel like Superwoman") but spends much of her time tou...