BAGHDAD -- In an airy studio lined with mirrors, little girls in pink leotards and boys in black shorts and white T-shirts pull themselves up as straight as they can and push their toes out into first position.

Their teacher, Ghada Taiyi, walks between them, straightening a pair of knobby knees and adjusting the curve of an arm. She switches on a cassette player, and the strains of a grand piano fill the room.

"You wouldn't think we are in Iraq," she says with a smile.

In a city full of bloodshed, the Baghdad School of Music and Ballet is an oasis, instilling in its young charges a love of music and dance in the midst of war.

"I feel happy when I come here," 11-year-old Lisam says as she catches her breath between leaps and twirls in another of the school's studios.

Through the worst of the violence, Iraq's only performing arts school never stopped putting on shows and sending its teachers and students on cultural exchanges abroad.

But the school, one of the few places left in Baghdad where children of all ethnic and religious backgrounds learn together, cannot shield the students from the horrors beyond its heavily guarded gates. Bomb blasts and rocket barrages shook the capital in the few hours that the students were practicing demi-plies and ports de bras.

"Sometimes, we see people killed and kidnapped," says Lisam, who doesn't give her last name for safety reasons. "Sometimes we even worry about our parents, when they bring us here and pick us up."

Lisam shares the same dreams as dance students anywhere in the world: "to be famous," she says.

But unlike girls growing up in less turbulent countries, she practices excerpts from the great classical ballets in her stocking feet, so as not to wear out her precious point shoes before the end-of-year recital. There is no place to buy another pair in Baghdad.

Most of the ballet students drop out when they're 12 or 13, Taiyi says, afraid of the Muslim extremists who consider music sacrilegious and kill for much less than dancing in public in a form-revealing tutu.

Each time a student stops showing up for class, staff members call the parents to ask why.

"They always say 'security, security, security,' " says Taiyi, a slim woman with a commanding presence who is not afraid to wear a leotard in front of male visitors in her studio.

Taiyi says she cried for days when one particularly promising student disappeared without explanation.

Taiyi graduated from the state-run school in 1984 and went on to teach there. Now, she says, "I am afraid that we are going to lose the art of ballet itself."

The school, which offers primary and secondary education, hasn't graduated a ballet-major class since the mid-1990s, when Saddam Hussein began courting conservative tribal and religious leaders to shore up his rule.

Even if the students did complete their training, there are no opportunities for ballet dancers in Iraq. The only professional performances most of the children see are on the videos and DVDs in the school library.

The challenges are just as great for the music students. Most leave their violins and flutes at school to avoid attracting the attention of religious militias by carrying instrument cases in the street. That cuts into their practice time, making it difficult to progress, says Ahmed Saleem, who as the school's technical director oversees music and dance education and the 42 arts teachers, many of them part-time staffers.

Saleem has moved six times to escape death threats, and he is not the only staff member to receive them. To avoid drawing attention, the school took down its sign two years ago.

It was not always like this. Art and culture have flourished in Iraq since the dawn of civilization. Even Hussein's brutal regime patronized artists, musicians and dancers for the glory they could bring the country.