Performance School Tries to Stay on Its Feet

Anita Armijo wants to be a dancer, not an uncommon ambition for a 15-year-old girl.

Along with 43 other like-minded teen-agers, she enrolled in the highly touted dance program at the Orange County High School of the Arts, which opened for the first time last September.

But more than two months after its ballyhooed launch on the campus of Los Alamitos High School, the program is struggling to overcome a host of problems, including inadequate facilities, uncertain funding and, perhaps worst of all, unfulfilled expectations.

Despite resourceful and self-sacrificing staffers and eager and talented students, the effectiveness of the high school’s dance curriculum is in doubt.

‘We Could Do More’

“I thought the school would be a lot more advanced in all areas,” Armijo, a sophomore from La Palma, said the other day. “I thought it would be over my head. When I got here, it was quite different from that. I don’t think they expect enough from us. We could really do more.”

Armijo is not alone in her disappointment. “It’s been very frustrating,” Anita Mitchell, the dance director, said last week.

Almost all of the dance majors are taking classes in a converted cafeteria lacking the barest essentials of a dance studio, such as mirrors and a barre-- a practice bar. Learning ballet--or for that matter jazz or modern dance--in such an environment is like trying to learn math in a classroom without a blackboard and desks.

Even more dispiriting is the absence of live piano accompaniment in any of the dance classes, including those with a handful of advanced students at a more adequate, private studio near the campus. Teachers must use records or tapes, as ballet instructor Jenny Chang was doing the other day in the off-campus studio. Although the scratchy recording delivered blurred strains of orchestral music, Chang and her eight students politely ignored that fact and pointed their toes in graceful unison.

The studio at least had mirrored walls and a barre.

Question of Money

“You really notice a difference when there is live music,” admitted Ralph Opacic, the 27-year-old director of the arts school, who was observing the class. “We had to make choices. It’s a question of money. We’ve been running so furiously to get the kids here and to build facilities that some of the things we hoped to do had to be put on the shelf.”

Later, during a tour of the school, Mitchell vented her frustration. “Getting accompanists is my pet peeve,” she said. “You need live piano to instill musicality.”

Occasionally, Mitchell has hired accompanists from UC Irvine at her own expense.

“We’re scrambling, really scrambling,” Opacic conceded. “We have great teachers and neat kids. We have a good basic curriculum. It’s just that we haven’t been able to enrich the program with the master classes we wanted. That would have made the curriculum more challenging.”

The idea behind the school was to hone the skills of gifted students and to prevent them from dropping out of school.

The tuition-free school, which is on the campus of Los Alamitos High School and operated by the Los Alamitos Unified School District, draws students from Orange County and neighboring districts in Long Beach, Norwalk, Cerritos and La Mirada. It is the sixth specialized performing arts school in California. Admission is based on auditions, as well as interviews, recommendations and academic record. Students either carry a regular load of academic courses at Los Alamitos or take academic courses in the morning in their home districts and commute to Los Alamitos for afternoon arts classes.

“All the reports that I’ve gotten as board member, the official reports, are very positive,” said Donna Artukovic, a trustee of the Los Alamitos school district. “There are apparently some snafus in finishing things up, but from what we hear, things are going along pretty well.”

School board President Arthur Genet declined to comment on the progress of the school.

This year the arts high school has an operating budget of $241,650, of which $101,000 was earmarked for construction of a 751-seat theater fully equipped for live and video productions. An additional $170,000 was donated for the theater by the Los Alamitos Education Foundation, a group organized to raise money for the school.

The theater was supposed to be ready by the beginning of the school year. Completion is now expected in January.

Salaries for instructors, many of whom teach in other jobs, came to a total of $78,990, the second largest item in the budget. “It’s disturbing not to have contingency funds to bring in top professionals--masters in their fields like a Stephen Sondheim--(to) inspire the students,” Opacic said.

Of the arts school’s 120 students, 60 are majoring in musical theater, 44 in dance and 16 in visual arts. School officials expect an enrollment of 225 next year, lending greater urgency to the need for three more on-campus dance studios by then.

“Our facilities are in dire straits,” said Jean Cross, the school coordinator and grant writer. “We simply must upgrade them. The dance program actually takes up most of our resources--by far--because of its special needs. Theater majors can have classes in an ordinary room, but dancers need space.”

Asked if she thought the school had opened prematurely, Cross said: “We have to be honest about assessing the program. We have to face our shortcomings. But I wouldn’t say we shouldn’t have opened.”

She pointed out that the school received its notice of public funding--a grant of $194,700 from the state Department of Education--four months late last spring. Moreover, enrollment at Los Alamitos High School turned out to be greater than expected this fall, forcing the arts school into smaller quarters.

“I think we should have tried to address the problems with our facilities a lot sooner,” Cross said. “But when the theater is finished, we can allocate more resources for instruction. Given all the constraints, I think we can hold our heads up high.”

Opacic, who routinely puts in 12-hour days, conceded he was “too optimistic” at the beginning of the school year. But he calls the current difficulties temporary.

“Two years from now all these problems will be worked out,” he said. “We’re just experiencing growing pains.”

Another unwelcome experience has been the label “Fame West,” which some have pinned on the school.

“I wish we could get away from that,” Mitchell said. “It’s so fly-by-night. We want to build a conservatory, something serious. That label is cheap.”

Still, without the movie “Fame” and subsequent television series based upon New York City’s performing arts high school, some of the students might never have enrolled.