Dance Education and Specter of AIDS : Health: Orange County’s high school for arts has no AIDS curriculum, while in L.A., two teachers try to make a difference.

Talk to dance teachers, choreographers or company directors today and they will tell you they are worried about the future of dance. Many of them say a whole generation of choreographers has died from AIDS and, with it, new visions for dance. Others add that keeping the art alive includes not only the usual fund-raisers and promotions but also a battle to keep dancers alive.

In fact, the dance world has suffered stupendous losses to AIDS in the last decade. One study surveying Dance magazine obituaries from 1986 to 1990 shows 305 deaths of male dancers, choreographers and teachers that the researcher attributed to AIDS-related complications. Add to that the AIDS-related death in March of 23-year-old Joffrey Ballet dancer and choreographer Edward Stierle (who has appeared in Orange County) and you are looking at a dance world haunted by a pall of fear and a sense of urgency to protect its future--particularly its male dancers.

“Something is killing young male dancers at an increasing rate, while sparing female dancers,” wrote Diana Schnitt, who compiled the research for a journal called Medical Problems of Performing Artists.

Although most Southern California high school students get AIDS education in their health and sex education classes as early as the fifth and sixth grades (usually with parental permission), dance instructors at two Los Angeles high schools for the arts have taken the subject onto the dance floor informally and unabashedly.

By contrast, dance teachers at the Orange County High School for the Performing Arts in Los Alamitos have done little in the way of direct education about AIDS. Rey Lozano, director of the local school’s commercial dance program, has touched upon the subject, albeit obliquely.

Ralph Opacic, the Orange County school’s executive director, said none of its teachers bring up AIDS because, he says, the subject is extensively addressed within pupils’ academic curriculum.

“We feel it’s being well dealt with in the health-education setting,” Opacic said. Students attend both their arts and academic classes on campus at Los Alamitos High School.

Lozano, 36, also feels his students are well-informed about the problem. So, he doesn’t talk about HIV tests, condoms or safe sex.

But Lozano’s 33-year-old brother died of AIDS-related complications in January. In addition, composer/lyricist Brian Shucker, a vocal coach at the school during its 1987-88 inaugural year who went on to write music and lyrics for the award-winning musical “Babes,” died earlier this month of complications from AIDS.

So while Lozano feels he isn’t emotionally ready to openly confront the situation with students, he has taken some action.

“I began to do indirect things to let them know they needed to be careful, that they had a lot of adventures ahead of them and should not rush into things” that could be life-threatening, Lozano said.

Along those lines, last winter Lozano choreographed “The Five Senses,” a dance for his students--who train for work in musicals, movies, television and videos--dedicated to his brother.

Through the dance, he hoped “to teach them about touching and smelling and feeling and that they had a lot of things they take for granted and should be very careful to protect,” he said. “They need to take forethought in everything, not just with dance, but with their education, with emotional involvement, boyfriend- and girlfriend-wise.”

Lozano also has taken part in weekly lectures on general health consciousness, which address such topics as anorexia and other eating disorders, another scourge among dancers, as well as drugs and smoking.

“It was just about being totally aware of the body,” said the Long Beach resident, who said he and singer Paula Abdul choreographed the 1990 Academy Awards program. “All in all, I’d say that’s about the closest we got to dealing with AIDS.”

Most Orange County high schools have some sort of AIDS education. In 1990, the number of new AIDS cases in the county jumped by 32% over the previous year, and 311 people, one of them a teen-ager, died of AIDS-related conditions, county health officials report.

“From everything I’ve read--and experiencing it with my brother--I’m aware that people think (AIDS) won’t happen to them,” Lozano said. “I felt I needed to do something to let people know that everybody needs to be careful and aware of it.

“And it’s not just a problem in the dance world. . . . Within the next three to four years, normal high school and college kids (who are not dancers or performers) represent the next target area for AIDS.”

Officials at L.A.’s high schools for the arts are taking a more aggressive approach to AIDS awareness.

Don Bondi, 58, modern-dance instructor and chairman of the dance department at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, says that although discussion of AIDS prevention is not a planned part of his dance classes, he believes it is his responsibility to talk to his students about it.

“If I can say something to save their lives, I will,” Bondi said. “I think that (informal) talks like these make (students) become aware, but more importantly, it makes them think. I don’t know if they carry it over. I tell them I don’t want them to die.

“And whenever there is a person in the news like Edward Stierle, I cut out the articles from the newspaper, pass them out and discuss it in class.”

Keny Long, 42, who doubles as a dance instructor and a health-education teacher at Hollywood High School Magnet for the Arts, said he talks about AIDS prevention in the dance class whenever it is appropriate.

“(AIDS) is something I take very seriously because I have had lots of friends who’ve died from the virus--dancers and choreographers,” Long said. “Whenever young (dancers) die or they’re in the news, I do talk about it. I try to make sure they realize that when it is a young dancer who dies that means they contracted (AIDS) when they were a teen-ager, and (students) usually say, ‘Whoa!’ ”

In Los Angeles, Bondi recently gave an emotional talk to his students about Stierle’s death in the hope that their identification with his youth and aspirations would render a greater effect.

“(Stierle) found out in 1988 that he was HIV-positive,” Bondi said to a group of attentive 16- and 17-year-old dancers sprawled out on the dance studio’s wood floor. “And he talked (in a news article) about how much he was looking forward to the opening performance of his piece by the Joffrey. It opened in New York, and it got wonderful reviews.

“Two days later,” Bondi said, visibly moved, “he died. And if we believe that (AIDS) takes five to seven years to appear, that means he was your age when he got it--16 or 15.

“Somewhere along the line he didn’t get the information. Or he didn’t apply it. I want you to have the opportunity to get it. Because you are young, don’t think you are exempt. Right now the best precaution is abstinence or the use of condoms.”

Heavy silence fell over the students sitting frozen and pensive while Bondi paced, pausing to study their faces. They stared at the articles about Stierle that had been passed out earlier: one about his promise as a brilliant choreographer; the other, his obituary.

After the 20-minute talk, one female student said of Bondi’s personalization of AIDS: “The first thing that hit me is the guy is 23, and he died. In an academic health class (they say), ‘This is how you catch it, and this is how you prevent it,’ but I need to know the reality of people dying and that I need to use a condom and I need to tell my friends to use a condom. And Mr. Bondi tells us that. It takes on more of an urgency because people are dying, people who affect our lives. It affects me more then.”

In separate interviews later, two groups of dance students, ages 16 and 17, from both of the arts schools talked candidly about how much they know about AIDS and about the attitudes young people have today regarding prevention. They all knew the bottom-line causes, but they argued that celibacy is unrealistic advice for most teen-agers. Say the word and watch giggling and whispering ripple through the group of young dancers.

One female dancer said of celibacy: “That’s crazy.”

Said another female: “For some of us, our parents don’t even know that we are sexually active, so they are not going to talk to us about safe sex. All the information that I have now I’ve learned from my friends and teachers. It’s really sad, but I don’t think my parents know me as well as they think they do.”

On why some teen-agers don’t use condoms, one young male dancer said: “They are just caught up in the heat of the moment. Or they think they know the person well enough.”

A resounding agreement of “yeah, yeah” rumbled loudly through the group of cross-legged dancers--some stretching, others lying on exercise pads.

Two of the males said condoms were too expensive. One of them added: “I’d rather steal one than buy the whole package.”

One student said that neither she nor her friends always use condoms.

While all the students said they knew where to get anonymous HIV tests, most of them added that they would not ask a boyfriend or girlfriend to take the test and wouldn’t take it themselves.

“Personally, I wouldn’t ask my boyfriend to take the test,” said another female student softly. “Just as much as he wouldn’t ask me to take one. I know that sounds ridiculous with the way things are going right now, but sometimes you feel you know someone so well that you feel you don’t need (the test) because you know everything about them.”

Long and Bondi agree that putting a human face on AIDS packs a powerful punch for their ambitious students, whose sense of invulnerability can sometimes be impervious to reason.

The question that students ask most often, Long said, is: Have you ever watched someone die of it?

He recently answered that question for his students by reading excerpts from his journal, in which he recorded his feelings about his best friend’s death from AIDS.

“I read excerpts to them and that lump got in my throat, and they were spellbound,” Long said. “I didn’t hold back any of the facts because I knew how important it was for them to experience it through me as a warning. When you tell them about a personal experience and they like you, they share in your pain and identify with you. I tell them that ultimately AIDS ends in death because there is no cure.”

Reflecting on recent losses of choreographer Michael Bennett, Stierle and others, Bondi said, “Yeah, someone else can fill in, but dance builds on other dancers and that gets lost when people die.

“All we can do is talk to the kids about AIDS and protecting themselves and hope that they do.”