Crowning achievement is within her reach

Remember Miss America?

You know, the girl with the sash whom Bert Parks serenaded? She grew up in Atlantic City but split for Las Vegas back in 2006? The one with the crown?

Ah yes, the crown - the distinctive, four-pointed tiara laden with so much Swarovski that it shines as bright as the tear-streaked beauty queen wearing it.

When she became Miss Pennsylvania back in July, Kendria Perry got one of those - or at least a replica given to local and state winners. But this week in Las Vegas, she's competing for the real thing. After preliminaries, Miss America 2009 will be crowned during a live telecast Saturday night.

Once upon a time, Miss America was supposed to represent the popular culture's ideal of American womanhood. As American culture and American women have changed, so has the pageant, though sometimes at a glacier's pace. "It's evolve or die, in a sense. The pageant has to be able to be progressive," Perry said. "Every time the pop culture has changed, it has gone through a metamorphosis. There was a point in time where all the contestants wore white dresses and gloves. Gloves!"

Perry, 24, will play the piano for her talent, continuing an interest that began before the North Carolina native ever put on an evening gown.

"I started playing piano when I was 5, and so being a musician has been an aspiration of mine longer than the aspiration of being a pageant queen," she said.

That didn't come until she was about 19, after meeting a former Miss America contestant who sang opera and explained to her the professional opportunities that pageants could offer. Before that, Perry admits to believing every beauty queen stereotype.

"I thought that all the girls were just extra-prissy, and I thought that they just might not have any substance," she said, chatting by cell phone (with a headset) while shuttling between public appearances near Johnstown. All titleholders choose a community service project - hers is called ArtWorks, which uses the arts to teach children life skills and critical thinking - and along with the public duties, it means pageant winners earn every penny of that scholarship money.

Perry, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, competed as Miss Armstrong County for the state crown, so it might be a stretch to call her a local. But she does know a bit about Philadelphia, having spent time studying at Temple University with piano professor Charles Abramovic. She rolled down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the city's Thanksgiving Day parade, and in late December was at the Union League for a lead-up event for the March 28 Miss Philadelphia pageant, when 2008 winner Brintha Vasagar will hand over her crown. While in town, Perry stopped by Nicole Miller in Manayunk - the local-favorite boutique is one of her sponsors - to pick up an outfit she'll wear during Pageant Week.

Preliminaries began yesterday, continue with swimsuit and evening gown competitions today, and tomorrow she'll do her piano performance in the talent competition. Friday is a day off; then the Miss America Live! telecast, with Mario Lopez hosting, begins at 8 p.m. Saturday.

And while all the public events and speaking engagements provide some practice for the Big Night, some of Perry's Miss Pennsylvania gigs have been just that - piano performances that also serve as chances for her to practice the complicated piece,

Chopin's Ballade 1 in G Minor

, that she'll perform in Las Vegas.

By all reports, Perry wowed the New Year's Eve crowd at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster, where she commanded a Steinway while decked out in a cream-colored charmeuse gown with low-crossed straps on the back - "to give people an interesting view while I'm seated at the piano."

The crown stayed backstage, lest it wiggle around and be a distraction while she played. Still, it wasn't until she returned to the stage for a Q&A a few minutes later wearing the crown that she heard the audience gasp. She kept the crown on for the New Year's celebration in the Academy's main hall, where she got her "boogie on" and posed for lots of photos.

Boogie aside, Perry's piano teacher at Carnegie Mellon, performer and lecturer Donna Amato, said she's "totally confident in Kendria's preparation" and thinks she'll shine in competition.

"She has chosen an extremely challenging piece by Chopin, that only the most accomplished pianists will attempt to play. She is technically nailing it with conviction, as well as displaying poetic musicianship," Amato said.

Even more challenging was Perry's inauguration as a reality TV contestant: Several weeks ago, Perry joined her fellow contestants aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary, now a floating hotel in Long Beach, Cailif., where they lived while competing in events to win a coveted spot in the Top 15. This being 2009, it was all videotaped for TLC's four-part

Countdown to the Crown

series that's been showing on Friday nights.

"We lived together for 21 days. On a ship," Perry laughs. "Just to put this in some kind of context for you: I don't even have siblings, and all of a sudden I had to live with 51 pageant queens in shipmates' quarters."

Then again, this is Miss A, with her singular ability to retain an image of wholesome beauty - even in a two-piece - so it wasn't exactly

Bad Girls' Club

, though the women were placed in teams and pitted against each other for events. That was "probably more grueling than the pageant will be," Perry said, as the contestants didn't know which events they'd compete in from one day to the next.

She hints at juicier moments, to be saved for television, of course. Still, it had its moments.

"There has to be drama," Perry said.