ST. JOSEPH DANCE CORPS WINS AWARD

The St. Joseph Ballet Company received an Arts Award from the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts at a ceremony Sunday night at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

The $500 award, underwritten by Frank B. Hall & Co., was given to the Santa Ana-based troupe for “dedication to training minority and disadvantaged youths who may not otherwise be able to afford access to the performing arts,” said Betty R. Moss, executive director of BCA.

Since 1982, the committee has honored local arts organizations for working with business leaders in development and long-range planning.

“The award is a tribute to the business that has taken a risk to invest in a new, innovative artistic program and to the people who believe that arts should be for everyone,” said Sister Beth Burns, artistic director of the ballet company.

“Businesses appreciate that what we provide is not just spectator art for youths but training.”

Founded in 1983 by Burns, a nun in the religious order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, the ballet company has 85 members, ages 9 to 19. About 60% of them are from families with incomes below the poverty line.

Students are offered introductory, intermediate or advanced ballet class, two to five times a week, for a nominal fee of $10 a month. The fee also covers practice clothes, toe shoes, costumes and occasional field trips to professional ballet performances by American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet and other groups.

Master classes with members of these major companies also are part of the St. Joseph program.

“Only about 10% . . . can afford to pay the fee, however,” Burns said. “For the rest, the fee is waived.

“Most are beginners and 85% are minority youths,” she said.

Burns estimated that she has taught more than 300 students since the company was founded. Another 800 students in 11 Santa Ana schools were reached in the fall alone through the company’s dance-free weeks, in which training is provided to inner-city children.

The dance-free concept was initiated through a three-year grant of $87,000 given by Mervyn’s Department Stores in 1985. Mervyn’s parent company, Dayton Hudson Corp., was among the five corporations honored by the Business Committee on Sunday night.

“Through Mervyn’s grant we were able to vastly expand our services,” Burns said.

“That’s how we began our dance-free weeks and were able to do more out-reach programs, as well as doubling our enrollments here.

“The grant also has given us stability to do long-range planning and training,” she added.

Burns said the St. Joseph company competed for the grant with about 75 other arts organizations in California and then went on to the national level, where the company was one of six arts-for-youth organizations chosen.

The troupe is planning to move soon from its current studios on Bush Street into quarters that will be built in the Fiesta Marketplace, a four block redevelopment project along 4th Street in Santa Ana.

The company has been given a five-year, rent-free lease by developer Irv Chase, owner of Chase Development Co., one of the project’s five partners. Funds are still needed for construction, Burns said.

The Orange County Business Committee, founded in 1981, is part of a national organization started in 1967 in New York by David Rockefeller to encourage business support for the arts. Previous winners of the BCA Arts Award have included the Orange County Master Chorale, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, the Laguna Art Museum, South Coast Repertory and Stop-Gap, a Laguna Beach-based nonprofit drama therapy group.