Gabrielle Angeles took her first turn at striking a taiko drum four years ago. She remembers, down to her bones, how it left her feeling that night.

"I came home and I couldn't even hold a cup," said Angeles, a 25-year-old dance instructor who lives in Kaimuki. "I (had been) gripping the bachi sticks so hard that the vibration didn't know where to travel. I couldn't stop shaking."

Angeles has come a long way since that first lesson at UCLA, where she earned a degree in world arts and cultures in 2004.

After spending a year in Japan studying taiko, she was awarded a one-year fellowship to train with Kenny Endo at his Taiko Center of the Pacific.

And though she's spent most of her life dancing, taiko has taken her fitness to another level.

"Taiko hones all aspects of your cognitive and kinesthetic skills," Angeles said. "It's a good overall workout."

THE TAIKO CHALLENGE

Taiko, a traditional Japanese style of drumming, found its way to Hawai'i with the wave of Japanese immigrants who arrived in the early 1900s.

Since then, taiko has become an integral — and aesthetic — part of local culture, with groups playing at obon festivals, corporate meetings and weddings.

Learning to play the thundering drums is not just about percussion. At the Taiko Center of the Pacific, along with the "musical challenge," people take classes "for things like stress relief, for the physical exercise," said Endo. He thinks taiko is "an example of something that combines your mind, body and spirit."

Drumming naturally works the arms and upper body, but it also requires a strong core, to maintain the discipline's physically demanding upright posture and lunging.

"You would think that it's concentrating on your arms, but because we have to play with our whole bodies, after a performance, my legs are just as tired as my arms," Endo said. "It's a total body workout ... You have to focus on building strength, flexibility and stamina."

After four years of consistent taiko training, Angeles has seen fitness improvements — particularly in her stamina.

And it's changed the way she dances, too.

"Taiko has really helped my dance, because I can feel rhythms more clearly and I can process information quicker," Angeles said. "And it feels really good to feel what I'm doing while I'm playing."

BORN TO DANCE

When Angeles was two months old, her family left Detroit to return to the Philippines.

They moved into a house next to her aunt who, with Angeles' mother, a professional dance instructor, ran a dance studio that connected the two homes.

"People were always coming in and out," Angeles said. "I'd always see people dancing."

It was just a matter of time before Angeles wandered into the studio.

Angeles would mimic the older students doing ballet moves, and her mother quickly enrolled her only daughter in dance class, where she learned ballet and hula.

"I loved it from the beginning," Angeles said. "It introduced me to different types of music and cultures. And I was good at it."

During high school in Michigan and college at UCLA, she added jazz, hip-hop and salsa to her repertoire.

But it wasn't until she attended the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles — and saw Endo perform with a Balinese dance group — that she discovered taiko.

"When I saw that, it was just awesome to have such great music with dance," Angeles said.

She gushed about it to a friend who knew the instructor of a practice taiko group at UCLA. She quickly signed up.

"I fell in love with the fact that it was so musical, and at the same time, very movement-based," Angeles said. "That's what struck my interest."

After two years of playing at UCLA, she moved to Japan in 2004 — right after graduation — to teach English and further her taiko training.

In Japan, she heard about Endo's fellowship program to study taiko in Hawai'i. She applied, was accepted, and moved to O'ahu last August.

Though she practices taiko for about six hours a week, she hasn't given up dancing — yet. The hard decision, she knows, is inevitably coming.

"It kinda scares me," Angeles said. "Eventually I'll have to decide between the two, and that's my biggest fear."