The stage darkens, lights focusing on a dramatic figure elegantly clothed in black who croons the opening melody and carries the spell-bound audience through song, dance and monologue with humor, poignancy, angst and a yearning that spans cultures and continents.

Not your typical autobiographical one-star show.

Formerly known as Christine Masaye “Tina” Horii, the dynamic performer has the looks and bio one would expect from a show-woman. A former Rockette featured in TV and print commercials, she has danced in Broadway shows as Miss Saigon and Shogun, and acted in off-off Broadway Shakespearean productions.

Born and raised in Honolulu, a fourth generation Japanese-American, she achieved success on the fast-paced LA and NY entertainment scenes.

Today this lovely woman is known to friends and fans as Rachel Factor, and to 2-1/2 year old Ariel and 15 month Shalom she is Ima, an observant Jerusalem mother, wife and Torah student. Her art has developed and changed just as dramatically. Rachel recently completed a 41-city, 4 month North American tour, performing her original JAP show to enchanted women-only crowds.

Quite a leap, even for a Rockette!

Rachel grew up in a “non-practicing” Protestant family, her paternal grandfather was a Buddhist, and her mother’s family nominally Christian. The vaguely spiritual girl attended private schools in Hawaii. As a teen, dance became her way of expressing and soothing her inner struggles, and at 18 the non-conformist dropped out of college to move to the mainland and try to build a future in show biz.

Rachel’s dance and acting career flourished. During the eighties, many shows featured Asians, which helped Rachel overcome the prejudice and insecurity she felt as an Asian-American. Just as blacks laboriously straightened their hair and Jews got nose jobs trying to look “All-American,” Rachel tried to put creases into her eyes with tape and other painful efforts.

She traveled to Japan three times in search of roots and meaning, but felt “no connection” to the foreign language, food and lifestyle, realizing how much more American than Japanese she was.

Enter a nice Jewish boy named Todd Factor, producer of TV commercials for two-bit companies like NFL, Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut! The two felt a connection. Todd was a proud but non-observant Jew. One day he told Tina, “You know it’s very important that my kids be Jewish.” She took a deep breath and thought to herself, “Well, it makes sense that you would be dating me!” She told him, “I don’t mind sending them to Hebrew school.”

Then she realized that Todd also had a Jewish wife in mind; to proceed to marriage she would have to convert. She had no intention of taking on a completely foreign religion. She decided to read up on it a bit, figuring she could then articulate the reasons why she couldn’t convert and the relationship should downgrade to friends status.

“Wow, this is pretty cool—not only beautiful, but also enlightened, intelligent, ancient and progressive at the same time,” she reacted in surprise to her initial inquiry. Still looking for an out, she called her mother, expecting her to agree that conversion was just too way out. Mom didn’t cooperate. “She said that Asian and Jewish cultures are very similar, both value family and education, and that Jewish men make great husbands.”

Tina intuited that this was it, although “his family was loud and boisterous and talked all their problems into the ground.” She thought “Somewhere deep in my heart, I knew I found the right place, the right family, the right husband, the right children waiting to be born.”

Tina schlepped Todd along for additional study, which he also enjoyed and found inspiring. She first had a non-halachic conversion in 2000. They became the most religious of their friends, eating kosher-style, learning and sharing Shabbos meals with friends. When Ariel was born in 2002, the couple requested a circumcision, but the Mohel urged them to first obtain a halachic conversion.

Neighbors in their Queens neighborhood, Rabbi Yehudah and Adina Zakutinsky, invited the Factors for a festive Shabbat-Sukkot meal. “I was overwhelmed,” Rachel recalls. “I saw amazing hospitality. People were actually living out their ideals, and living for their community. The next weekend we kept Shabbos for real, and haven’t stopped since.”

The Torah lifestyle spoke to the couple’s spiritual thirst, and they started working with a mentor, Rabbi Simcha Kallus. By Passover of the same year, Tina underwent an Orthodox conversion, adopting the Hebrew name Rachel.

Shortly afterward, she went to her agents, and told them she could no longer continue performing, as it went against the letter and spirit of Jewish modesty. “I expected to feel depressed, but instead felt liberated and relieved,” Rachel remembers. The tznius-modest dressing was difficult at first, but “I felt more dignified” after a while.

The young family decided to visit Jerusalem for undistracted study. The few months stretched out into a longer stay and then a move, as the holiness and charm of the Jewish homeland wove its magic.

They are thrilled and grateful for the beauty of their lifestyle. “I searched everywhere in mainstream and alternative society for this kind of satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment,” Rachel enthuses. Now her days are filled with “regular mom stuff. Mothers nurture the souls of the future. I love my life, I was busy before, but now I am finally busy for a purpose. Judaism has such an incredible attitude towards marriage, childbearing, childrearing. It is one of the main ways to emulate G-d, through nurturing, giving, creating.”

On tour in America, they visited with old friends, “we saw how empty many of their lives are—they are searching for love, fulfillment, having children is passing them by. No matter how successful they are, they come up empty at the end of the day. We are continually overwhelmed when we look at our children, and feel so grateful.”

So, did Tina/Rachel just pack up her dance shoes and store them away in her memory closet? Soon after her conversion, Rachel wrote much of the JAP monologue, chronicling her life journey. “The play on the usually negative JAP slur seemed perfect. It reflects my growth and pride in both my Japanese-American heritage and Jewish-American status. Truly, a Jewish woman is a princess, though not in the conventional JAP sense.” She showed her work to a Jerusalem neighbor, who encouraged her to perform it for a group of women.

By word of mouth, more and more women flocked to see it, ‘till it grew beyond living rooms to halls. Rachel and Todd-Tuvia used their professional skills to develop the show to the max, and hit the road this past fall, making it an exciting family cross-country excursion in a Winnebago.

“It was an amazing experience,” Rachel relates, back home in Jerusalem. “We met people all over the country, and learned so much from being around all kinds of families. We got wonderful feedback. People really wanted to hear this message. Especially younger woman—it will make a difference in their future choices. It was profound for us. I studied for so long to be able to communicate in this way—and am so grateful to be able to utilize all my talents.”

Does performing for women only feel second rate? “This is my most creative outlet so far, by far. I was the Rockette, third girl from the left. There were really a thousand people who could have done my job. It was an achievement for sure, but my present experience is incomparable. Before I was just a piece of the puzzle—not the force behind it. I mean, no one else could tell my story.”

And tell it she does. In her compelling voice, these lines from one of her songs convey the deep place her path has brought her:

“I find the answer is not a choice
It’s simply where I walk...
And dreams are for the young
And my life is here at last.”

The proceeds from the tour will fund a women’s creative arts center in Jerusalem, named Lirkod—to dance. “I needed the arts as a young person, and both young people and adults need more safe places to explore and create. The arts add so much vitality to what we women can give to our children, community and G-d.”

If you see a lovely young mother of Asian appearance pushing a stroller up the rocky Jerusalem road, it may well be Rachel, the ex-Rockette, using her strength to connect her family with the eternal Rock of Israel.