Barely 20 and green, cocky and ambitious (his own words), Peter Rockford Espiritu, a young man from Waimalu who'd never been away from home, left the Islands for the Mainland. He had one goal: to be a ballet dancer, "to live that dancer life."

He got his wish, successfully auditioning for the School of American Ballet and performing in the corps of various companies. But he had to admit that, as a man of color in a Caucasian-dominated art form, and facing the stiffest competition in the world, he was unlikely to get chosen for the coveted "prince" roles. He had achieved his first dream, but he had to acknowledge another reality: He wasn't happy.

Now he is about to realize another dream. He premieres his modern Hawaiian dance opera, "Naupaka, A Hawaiian Love Story," Saturday night at Leeward Community College Theatre. Espiritu, now 43, spent time with The Advertiser, reflecting on how a kid who only wanted to be a classical ballet dancer found himself choreographing a Hawaiian legend.

Espiritu came home in the early 1980s to reassess and, in a common irony, found what he was looking for right here. He found it in the world of modern dance, which he had resisted because he so loved ballet.

"When I came home ... everybody wanted me to dance. There were tons of jobs. Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin of Dances We Dance, a modern company, really opened my eyes," recalled the founder of Tau Dance Theater.

He also found a piece of himself that he had always resisted: his Hawaiian/Polynesian roots (his father is Hawaiian, his mother Samoan).

"My Hawaiianness was always in me, but I always fought it," Espiritu said.

In high school, he had taken Hawaiian language and hula, and he had joined a pivotal Hawaiian club founded by the late kumu John Ka'imikaua. But Espiritu was a self-described maverick, more interested in the city life and the club scene than in 'ami and oli.

After his ballet interlude in New York, Espiritu came to realize that he was running away from himself, that he had to find his own identity and that that person had to be a modern dancer and a Hawaiian.

He knew he couldn't be the only Hawaiian dealing with such a dilemma, and he resolved it when he began to cautiously and respectfully work with Hawaiian material in a modern dance setting. His first major attempt was a smashing success that resulted in a Mainland tour: a 2003 collaboration with respected Halau O Kekuhi of Hilo in a work called "Hanau Ka Moku," which combined the Kanaka'ole family's stirring brand of 'ai ha'a hula with the grace and strength of Tau Dance Theater's modern dance style.

"Our tagline is responsibly moving culture forward through the arts," he said of Tau Dance. In "Naupaka," "we are using Western tools to tell traditional stories, honoring the oral traditions."

"I've now come full circle, taking traditional hula, traditional chants and at the same time, keeping up my modern and ballet studies. That way, I have the tools for what I'm creating," he said.

He hastens to add that Tau Dance is not a halau and "Naupaka," although it contains some hula, is not a hula show.

The legend on which the opera is based is one of the most familiar in the Hawaiian pantheon — the story of a pair of lovers thwarted by class differences. Parted, they become two halves of a flower: one the beach naupaka, one the mountain naupaka, ever separate, never whole.

But by talking with kupuna and searching various archives, and with the aid of Hawaiian language scholar and researcher Puakea Nogelmeier, Espiritu has learned something new about this familiar story, in exploring the mythology and the lineage of Naupaka.

Nogelmeier has concluded that Naupaka was the name of the male demigod, not the woman, as is often portrayed. And the problem facing the pair was not just that she was a commoner but that she was kauwa, of the slave class, in the fanciful words of the legend, 'ohiki maka loa (a mere sand crab).

"Being a commoner is one thing, being with a kauwa is a whole different story," Espiritu said.

He was intrigued by the legend's Romeo-and-Juliet-type storyline, the fact that the naupaka is something you see all the time but don't know much about, the question of why they were separated, and what the plant means to us metaphorically.

Espiritu said his biggest struggle has been with people who have misunderstood his aims, who weren't sure it was pono to pair Hawaiian and Western forms, who suspected the motives of a guy who originally rejected hula for modern dance.

"It wasn't an easy journey. Lots of people don't know who we are, but it's more lenient than 10 years ago," he said. He notes that he has stayed away from themes considered sacred. And the story (which will be told in Hawaiian with English supertitles) is based on the original texts, not translated: "Everything is new."

"In my journey for identity, I've always been very clear. Tau Dance Theater does not do hula," he said. "A lot of it looks like hula, and feels like it, but it's not. ... We will continue in that vein because it's our responsibility, but we are a modern dance company."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.