Awakening MacArthur Park’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Something is afoot in MacArthur Park this lazy August afternoon--and it’s got nothing to do with drugs or gangs.

“One . . . two,” a doe-eyed young woman commands from the band-shell stage, as a retinue of aspiring ballerinas in tutus jete to boom-box Tchaikovsky.

Three boys skid their bikes to a standstill, leaning forward on the handlebars to watch. Nearby, rows of wooden benches fill with sundry onlookers. A homeless man perched on a nearby hill is transfixed; the businessmen at the picnic table stop talking to eye the action.

Putting the women through their paces is Helena Ross, veteran of international ballet competitions and best known to local balletomanes for her guest appearances with the Long Beach Ballet.

Her dancers are preparing an excerpt from “Sleeping Beauty” to be performed on Saturday as part of festivities designed as a show of strength by those who want to reclaim MacArthur Park for the community.

Local girls and boys who are taking these free classes with Ross will participate in the parades and performance; a few of the boys will portray the evil Carabosse and his cohorts in the “Sleeping Beauty” selection.

Sponsored by a coalition of community groups known as L.A. C.R.U.S.A.D.E.R.S., the parades will begin around 10:30 a.m. at Belmont High School and St. Basil’s Catholic Church and converge upon the MacArthur Park band shell around lunchtime for the dances and other presentations.

This event will be the second outing for Ross’ Southern California Ballet of the Sun, a descendant of legendary Ballet Russe “baby ballerina” Tatiana Riabouchinska-Lichine’s defunct Southern California companies. The group brings together professional dancers and inner-city youths.

The first production of Ross’ company was a fuller version of “Sleeping Beauty” at El Centro Wilshire Family Center in June, 1988.

What’s a nice classical dancer like Ross doing in an inner-city park like this--working for free, no less?

Giving something back to the community, as she sees it. Ross, who first took lessons at 4 in Shatto Park, studied on scholarship at the Lichine Ballet Academy and taught on the Westside before circling back to this part of town, where she once again lives.

“I stumbled upon teaching in the inner city,” Ross says, recalling her experience with former El Centro Wishire director Carmelo Alvarez.

“They were working on a little performance (at El Centro),” she says. “I guess I was too young and naive, but I said, ‘Don’t give up.’ We had a crash course in ‘Nutcracker’ and the boys did their break-dancing. We did so much with those kids in two weeks.”

It is, as she’ll tell you, a far cry from the usual barre scene. “In Beverly Hills there was much more of a sense that I was baby-sitting,” Ross says. “Here the family comes with the girls. They value the classes a lot more.”

“The community people are so pleased to see it happening,” says Maria Ross, Helena’s mother and company administrator. “There is nothing that would prevent these children from being as good as products of the Bolshoi or the Royal Ballet--except funding.”

“The teachers are here, but somebody has to care.”

Alma Martinez, who sits beaming as her daughter runs and leaps on stage with a line of little girls, agrees. She calls Helena Ross a “special” teacher, adding that she hopes the classes will continue.

So far Ross, who says she was a little nervous when she first brought her dancers to the band shell, hasn’t had any problems in this unusual setting.

“Even the so-called hoodlums appreciate culture,” she says. “We joke about it, but there is a common bond. When we’re up on that stage, they treat us differently, with so much respect.”

The only thing holding them back, Maria Ross says, is the lack of financing. “We got a grant from cultural affairs to do the show on the 19th, but that’s it,” she says.

“Why aren’t they putting money into recreational or cultural programming for the kids in the most densely populated part of the city?” she asks. “All there is is a senior program.

“Some of those gang members are fantastic soccer players and dancers and they sure as heck weren’t getting into trouble when they were out there playing,” she says, arguing that Los Angeles “might have less trouble with gangs later on” if such alternatives were supported.

Helena Ross thinks so too: “The kids whose lives are shaken up need a program that won’t be here one month and gone the next.”

“We should have a training system like they have at the Kirov, where you don’t have to be rich to be talented. There’s so much talent that’s going to waste here,” she says.

“I understand the odds these kids have against them. But if there’s one thing that L.A. could contribute, it’d be having a company where the faces you see on the stage aren’t all the same, aren’t all WASPs. That to me is beauty.”