Family of the Month (FOM) is awarded to parents that go the extra mile to help other families at Pas De Deux Hawaii! This family will receive a free month of tuition, compliments of owners Wendy and Jeremy Gilbert. Want to nominate a deserving family? Email us!




February 2024
The Ching Family

Aloha PDD family!  We are surprised and honored to be chosen for this month’s Family of the Month!  We are Keola and Rhiannon Ching, parents of Braelynn, who is currently enrolled in Hip Hop level 4 and Tahitian level 2.  Our family photo includes our two other children, Brayden and Briannalynn, having a great time at our favorite place to visit, Disneyworld!

Keola is a Fire Captain with the Honolulu Fire Department and has been a firefighter for almost 24 years.  He also owns and operates his training company, HeartStart CPR & First Aid.  Rhiannon retired from Hawaiian Airlines in 2020 after 20 years of customer service, needing to be home with Braelynn during the pandemic.  She is now a life insurance and living benefits agent with Premier Financial Alliance and finds her new career very gratifying in that she is able to help people achieve their financial goals.  Brayden (25) is an assistant produce manager for Safeway and is hoping to follow in his family legacy of eventually becoming a firefighter.  If successful, he’ll be the fourth generation on Keola’s side.  Briannalynn (21) danced Hip Hop and Tahitian at PDD for about eight years until she graduated from Mililani High school in 2020.  She was also in Company Hip Hop her last two years and still fondly remembers dancing with the late and great Twitch during one of his workshops in Las Vegas during The Dance Awards competition.  She is currently attending Valencia College in Florida pursuing a degree in nursing, while working at Animal Kingdom in Disneyworld driving the Kilimanjaro Safari tour truck.  Say hello to her if you see her on your next family vacation!

Braelynn (13) is a 7th grader at Mid-Pacific Institute.  This is her second year there and was fortunate to have been selected to join the intermediate volleyball team this year with no prior volleyball experience.  She will be joining the track team as well and also plays the clarinet in the intermediate band.  Her dance journey began when she was six years old, following in her big sister’s footsteps of dancing Tahitian at first, then Hip Hop a little later.  She really enjoys expressing herself through the two different genres of dance and looks forward to performances and recitals.  She is normally somewhat quiet and reserved but opens up and shines on stage.  She says she still gets nervous before every performance but wishes they wouldn’t end at the conclusion of each one.  We really look forward to all of her performances too as we get to sit back and see her hard work in practice (Not to mention seeing the fruit of our labor as dance parents who invest so much time trying to kill time while waiting for her during practices.  You all know the struggle is real!).  We are hoping she will take her Hip Hop dance to the next level and try out for Company one day.

We’ve now been with PDD for 12 years from the original studio in Waipahu and have seen a lot of positive growth.  We love the passion for dance and the desire to see the kids succeed from Wendy and Jeremy, which has also has been an enduring quality with every instructor that we’ve had the pleasure of knowing.  We’ve seen the dance styles of many other studios over the years at competitions here locally and on the mainland as well, and are happy and proud to say that PDD has always produced age-appropriate dances and productions.  Thank you, Wendy and Jeremy, for keeping our kids, kids.  Our advice to everyone would be to continue to support your children and get involved through volunteering during performances and recitals, no matter how small your role may be.  Your kids will see you there supporting them and will feel encouraged in achieving their full potential.  Not every child will become a professional dancer, but having dance as an artform in their lives will make them more well-rounded individuals and set them up for success later in life.