Biography

Born in the Bay Area, California, Celeste Lau began her early training at Yoko’s Dance and Performing Arts Academy with Yoko Young exposing her to various genres of dance including ballet, contemporary, jazz, musical theater, and etc. Simultaneously, she also joined the San Francisco Ballet School where she trained under the direction of Tina LeBlanc, Damara Bennett, Yuko Katsumi, Jeff Lyons, and Patrick Armand for nine years. As a student, Lau performed in many company works including as Young Cinderella in Christopher Wheldon’s Cinderella, Waltz of the Hours in George Balanchine’s Coppelia, Helgi Tomasson’s The Nutcracker, and represented the ballet school in their Season Galas. 

In 2017, Lau joined the Houston Ballet Academy where she performed works such as Stanton Welch’s The Nutcracker, Claudio Muñoz’s Raymonda, and Waltz of the Hours in Ben Stevenson’s Coppelia. In 2020, Lau spent her last year of high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts on scholarship under the direction of Jared Redick, Angelina Sansone, Laura Martin, Dayna Fox, Jennet Zerbe, and Endalyn Taylor. While in attendance, Lau performed in Ilya Kozadayev’s The Nutcracker, Eva Draw’s Don Quixote, and as a principal in August Bournonville’s Napoli and Gina Patterson’s Seven Deadly Sins. Lau continued training at UNCSA during her first year of university and later transferred to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a dance major. She has performed as Dew Drop in Rachael Vrbancic’s Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, Big Swan in Jiang Qi’s Swan Lake Act II, Esmeralda in Tricia Sundbeck and Isabele Elefson's Esmeralda Suite, and in Shauna Steele’s original contemporary works, The End in the Beginning and Still Waters. 

Recently, Lau has performed as a Guest Artist under the direction of Brandon Ragland for the Dayton Ballet in Karen Russo Burke's Nutcracker and Septime Webre's Swan Lake.

Throughout her summers, she has studied at the San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Bolshoi Ballet, Houston Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, UNCSA, Cincinnati Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet where she received a Birger Bartholin Scholarship for the following year, and Orsolina 28 where she studied and performed repetoire from Marco Goecke and Crystal Pite. Lau is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and a Minor in Architectural Studies and is scheduled to graduate Spring of 2025.