Students Will Be in Step With the Professionals at Festival : Dance: Talent from the Orange County High School of the Arts and guest artists will share the stage for modern/jazz and ballet programs.

David Allan, former soloist and choreographer with the National Ballet of Canada and now free-lance choreographer, is used to working with experienced dancers.

So leading 16-year-old Kimberly Mikesell through his 1983 duet “Pastel” was a “patience exercise” for him--but one with its own rewards.

While the romantic relationship aspects of the piece (part of Friday’s program in the annual dance festival of the Orange County High School of the Arts) might be grasped intuitively by more mature dancers, Allan found himself spelling them out for Mikesell--the youngest dancer ever to perform the piece.

“I want to see a flame of absolute passion here,” the energetic 33-year-old choreographer told Mikesell and her professional partner, gesturing flamboyantly from his chest to the ceiling during a rehearsal last week.

Articulating the emotions that drive the jazzy 6 1/2-minute piece was for him a chance to “get back to the essence of what I’m really trying to say in the piece,” Allan said later. “I find it really interesting.”

While he may occasionally need to talk Mikesell through the emotional aspects of the piece, he didn’t soften its technical demands for her. “That’s a hell of a step,” he said during the rehearsal as she struggled with one particularly difficult move. “I could simplify it, but I don’t want to.”

Giving young students exposure to professionals from the world of dance--and a taste of the pressures in that world--is one of the primary goals of Anita Mitchell, director of the school’s dance program.

The Orange County High School of the Arts, now in its third year, offers an arts-based curriculum to about 275 of the most talented students in dance, music, theater and visual art from throughout Orange County and southern Los Angeles County.

“It’s very important to stretch talented students,” Mitchell said. “They need to be prepared. You can never know too much.”

This year’s school dance festival includes a concert tonight with guest choreographer Juana Escobar and the R’Wanda Lewis Dance Company and a modern/jazz program Thursday with input from guest choreographer Hama. Among the professionals contributing to Friday’s ballet program are Allan, Tomm Ruud of the San Francisco Ballet, and Los Angeles Chamber Ballet principal dancers Victoria Koenig and Laurence Blake.

Ruud, principal character dancer and rehearsal assistant to the director for the San Francisco company, created a new piece for 10 dancers to music by Vivaldi for Friday’s program. He came to the school last fall to set the first two movements and returned in January to set the final movement.

While professional dancers absorb instruction faster, Ruud said in a phone interview from San Francisco, “it’s exciting working with young, eager talent that wants to achieve.”

Ruud praised the concept of a public high school with an emphasis in arts education. “I like that,” he said. “I know as a child I wasn’t exposed to the arts that much.”

Mitchell, the school’s dance director since its opening, studied at UC Irvine under dance historian Olga Maynard; last year’s Orange County High School of the Arts dance concert feted Maynard upon her retirement. Both Allan and Ruud contributed to the program.

As a youth, Mitchell attended a respected arts high school--North Carolina School of the Arts. “I came out of that environment, so I know where this school can go,” said Mitchell, an intense young woman who admits that she is aggressive in recruiting dance professionals to teach at her school. “I don’t shy away from challenges.”

Her ideal guest artist is one who combines skill as choreographer, coach and teacher, and who can treat the young dancers with sensitivity (“Some people out there are ogres,” she said) without pampering them.

“I don’t want to prop up any dancer with praise,” Mitchell said. “They have to be hungry.”

The Orange County High School of the Arts’ annual dance festival begins today in the Margaret Webb Performing Arts Center at Los Alamitos High School, 3591 Cerritos Ave., Los Alamitos, at 7:30 p.m. with a program of international folk dance by the R’Wanda Lewis Dance Company with Juana Escobar. The festival continues Thursday with a modern and jazz program and Friday with ballet. Tickets for each program: $5 to $6. Information: (714) 988-7581.