Bellmore-Merrick dancer is a 'triple threat'

Fifth in a series on Bellmore-Merrick students of the arts.

It would be challenging to find a young performer more multi-dimensional than Kristen Murphy. The North Bellmore resident is already an accomplished dancer, singer and actress. She has won seven solo dance competitions up and down the East Coast, and has performed in front 500 people at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury, formerly known as the Westbury Music Fair.

She has also starred in productions of “West Side Story,” “Seussical the Musical” and “Jack and the Beanstalk,” in venues across Nassau County, including Hofstra University and the Broadhollow Theatre in Elmont, and has even performed at the prestigious Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City.

And she’s only 13 years old.

“I don’t know what I’d do without dance and theater,” Kristen said. “It makes me who I am.”

Her first love, Kristen said, is dancing. Like most young performers, she began dancing around her house around the same time that she learned to walk. By age 2, she was already enrolled in performing arts classes around Bellmore and Merrick. “I love to entertain people,” she said. “That’s what I do. It’s nice to see that you made someone smile at the end of the day, or just made someone’s day better.”

Also an avid gymnast, swimmer and runner, Kristen is as active as they come. That may be the norm for many 13-year-old girls, but it’s quite extraordinary for Kristen when you consider her childhood. The day before she turned 3, she had surgery to repair her ductus arteriosus, a blood vessel in the heart that allows blood to go around the baby’s lungs before birth. Every child is born with the vessel open, but it usually closes a couple of days after birth. But Kristen’s did not close, and doctors told her she needed surgery. “It’s one of the milder congenital heart defects,” said Anne, Kristen’s mother. “But if she didn’t do it, she would have had congestive heart failure in her 30s.”

The surgery was successful, and the doctors at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn told Anne that Kristen could return to dancing as soon as one week later. She did and never stopped, and she now has a fully functional and athletic heart. “I try to stay extra active,” Kristen said.