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Chopin's "Fantaisie — Impromptu" filled the air in a practice room in Biedenharn Hall at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Miss Louisiana Justine Ker has been working with professor Richard Seiler on her performance for the talent portion of the Miss America Pageant. While there is an element of stage presence, she's been working on "the execution of the sound — making it sound like the piano is singing.”
Regular talent practice is just one of the many elements that go into preparing for the national pageant.
Ker said she’s been working with a fitness trainer at least four days a week and for at least an hour every day, working on a different muscle group each day.
“One of my biggest issues when it comes to working out is building muscle. Because I have a high metabolism, I have the opposite problem of most people, which is I need to gain weight … whereas I actually need to consume more calories.”
She said she’s glad she gets to work with a nutritionist who’s been helping her determine how to get more protein and calories in her diet without sacrificing healthy options.
Contestants also go through several practice interviews that cover numerous topics and current events.
Ker, of Choudrant, will represent the state at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Preliminaries are Sept. 6-8, and finals will be Sept. 11. She departs for Atlantic City on Sunday.
“I'm proud to represent Louisiana. This is my home. This is where I have grown up,” she said.
To see friends and family supporting her at her sendoff party, she said, "really put the title of Miss Louisiana in perspective because when I go to compete in Miss America, I'm not just competing for myself. I'm competing on behalf of all my friends and my family and the state of Louisiana, who's here supporting me. It makes the title so much more meaningful and special, and it makes all of my appearances and all of those memories ... such a treasure to me."
THENEWSSTAR.COM
Meet Miss Louisiana 2016 Justine Ker
Ker said she’s taking time this week to collect her thoughts and reflect on her training.
Preparation work and the job of being Miss Louisiana have kept her busy. She’s had a minimum of four public appearances a week, and she’s volunteering with the Red Cross of Northeast Louisiana because some of her appearances in South Louisiana were canceled because of flooding.
She said one of the biggest changes in her life is having to work with so many people at one time. She said in college, she created her own schedule, but this requires teamwork and a lot of coordination.
Ker is deferring medical school at Tulane University for a year while she acts as Miss Louisiana. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University.
She is a first-generation Taiwanese-American and the first Asian-American Miss Louisiana. She also is the first young woman to start as a Fleur De Lis Princess, win Miss Louisiana Outstanding Teen and ultimately be crowned Miss Louisiana.
Her first cousin was Miss California in 2013, so Ker’s grandmother is the only woman in Taiwan to have two granddaughters compete on the Miss America stage. Ker said a national media group in Taiwan did a news segment about the family link that played several times.
“I used to travel back to Taiwan once a year, every single summer growing up from kindergarten all the way to when I was in high school,” Ker said. “It is like my second home because that’s where my parents are originally from, so to be able to say that I was on another country's national news is just one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me.”
THENEWSSTAR.COM
Justine Ker crowned Miss Louisiana
In two years of competing in the Miss Louisiana Organization, Ker won more than $21,000 in scholarships. In the 2016 pageant, she won the Women in Medicine award, a STEM scholarship, the preliminary talent competition and an instrumentalist award.
She has been classically trained on piano for 17 years and classically trained on violin for 12 years, and she was crowned Miss Louisiana in June.
http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/local/2016/08/24/justine-ker-prepares-miss-america/89199360/