Different Drummer : Reading, Writing and Rhythm Merge at Arts High School

Wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt and closely cropped hair, 15-year-old Joel Gruenberg pounds on the piano like a frenzied ragtime musician.

“You’re incorrigible,” chides teacher Nellie Ghazarian. She turns to violinist Quan Ly and cellist Kelly McCulley, both 17, and signals the start of rehearsal.

Discordant warm-up notes fade into silence. Suddenly, the unruly high school students coalesce into a disciplined Mozart trio. Concentration glints in their eyes. This is serious business.

Scenes like this unfold all afternoon at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Southern California’s prestigious public prep school for the artistically inclined.

Like the La Guardia School of the Arts in New York--portrayed in the film “Fame”--Los Angeles County High School for the Arts is the place to pursue your muse, be it figure drawing, choral music or advanced ballet.

The school, only six years old, is earning raves. Experts say that within its painting, drama and dance studios may lurk the David Hockneys, Meryl Streeps and Alvin Aileys of tomorrow.

Students have an opportunity to develop their talents under the tutelage of professional artists. When they graduate, it is with the portfolios and prowess to get into such places as New York’s Juilliard and Cooper Union, Los Angeles’ Otis/Parsons and the National Ballet of Canada.

“They’re extremely well prepared. They compare favorably to students who have had college training already,” said Kit Baron, vice president of student services at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, one of the top design schools in the country.

But attending the Arts High School isn’t for everyone. The campus is seven miles east of downtown at Cal State Los Angeles and has none of the traditional high school amenities such as football games, cheerleaders and pep rallies.

Then there’s the workload. Students attend school for eight hours a day instead of the usual six, taking academics all morning and art classes until 4 p.m.

The campus draws its students from 83 school districts, from Valencia to Malibu to Pomona, but doesn’t provide transportation, so many students face grueling bus commutes on top of their heavy schedules.

For some teen-agers, the biggest hurdle may be at home. In several cases, school administrators say, parents discouraged their sons from becoming dancers, fearing they would be labeled “sissies.” Some Asian girls have been held back by families who thought the theater wasn’t a respectable profession.

But many students say the payoff is worth the long hours and occasional parental skirmish.

Consider the experience of senior Matthew Rushing, a dancer whose grace and strength just earned him a $5,000 Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award and a full scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet School in New York.

The 17-year-old started out dancing to rap music on the street and in clubs. He learned about the arts school through a TV advertisement and promptly enrolled. Rushing, whose family lives in San Bernardino, says he spends up to four hours a day commuting but wouldn’t trade the long hours for a more traditional campus.

“I don’t think I could go to a regular high school,” the tall, lithe dancer said. “This school lets you be you. There are no cliques, no certain way to dress. You just dance for three to four hours a day, and that takes you through all the bad stuff.”

Administrators say Rushing is one of their more talented students, but his dedication is typical of many.

College admissions officers, who line up on campus each year to recruit students, say Arts High School graduates are more mature and better prepared than students who already have spent time in college.

“It’s like the last girdle at Macy’s; everybody’s tugging for the best students,” said Ed Noriega, a visual arts professor at New York’s Cooper Union school of art who makes annual recruiting pilgrimages to the Arts High School.

Hollywood also has come knocking. Each week, the school bulletin is filled with casting calls from networks, movie studios and companies making television commercials. Several years ago, Percy Adlon, the German director of the critically acclaimed film “Bagdad Cafe,” visited the Arts High School to look for students he could cast as children of the cafe proprietor.

He settled on students Monica Calhoun and Darron Flagg. In a bow to school regulations, which demand that any jobs be scheduled around academics, he shot the scenes during school breaks.

The Arts High School reflects the cultural diversity of Los Angeles. The student body is 48% Anglo, 21.5% Latino, 13% black, 12% Asian, 5% Pacific Islander and 0.5% American Indian. In addition, 10% speak only limited English and 8% qualify for the federally funded school lunch program.

But tuition is free and once students arrange transportation, attending the Arts High School offers considerable advantages.

Students can use Cal State Los Angeles’ science and language labs and the college library. They practice and perform at high-tech university playhouses and dance facilities built for the Joffrey Ballet.

Many students say they were drawn by the chance to exchange ideas with kindred spirits.

“People . . . here have the freedom to grow up,” said Gabrielle Shelton, 18, who won a national Presidential Scholar award in the visual arts. “Here, I don’t have to deal with all the high school problems like fights and juvenile behavior.”

Ninety percent of the students at the school, which has an enrollment of 454, go on to college or professional school, administrators say, compared with 59% nationwide. On standardized tests, Arts High School students score in the 98th percentile in writing, 95th percentile in reading and 78th percentile in math.

To get in, students must submit portfolios or perform auditions. Last year, school officials said, 700 students applied for 232 openings.

Administrators concede that the school is not well publicized. Many students said they came across it by chance or were tipped off by friends already enrolled.

“Even our counselor had never heard about it,” said Jeff Ono, a visual artist who transferred from Covina High School after a friend recommended Arts High.

Illustrator Sputnik Chang, 17, a senior with shaved temples, ponytail, small round glasses and a 200-year-old Chinese coin dangling from his neck, learned about the school when he enrolled in a drawing class at the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design.

The Arts High School’s academic teachers, on loan from other area school districts, are “mentor” teachers singled out to train other teachers because of their skills.

The 104 professional artists who teach the afternoon classes include muralist Kent Twitchell, theater director Norman Cohen, former Martha Graham dancer and choreographer Don Hewitt, movie and theater set designer Bob Zentis and former Fifth Dimension singer Patricia Bass.

Art coexists with academics. French teacher Marian Kilger said students have turned in essays on Moliere and the history of French dance.

Recently, one chemistry class gave performances that included “Oxygen Sisters Meet the Hydrogen Studs,” choreographed by Erykka Jimenez, and “Fission Fury,” in which Chippewa Thomas played a neutron that approaches a nucleus with menacing thoughts.

Early one afternoon, a visual arts class gathered around a sculpture created by student Jenna Cohen, 16, which featured painted wood, bones, antlers and fur in a jarring combination that evoked both a tortured animal and a vicious trap.

Cohen said the piece was a statement about the martyrdom of animals at human hands. Then the class began its critique.

“I think you should have left a little flesh on it and let it dry, then you could have shellacked it,” one student said.

“It processes animals, then destroys them, like a sacrificial altar,” another student offered.

Cohen nodded seriously. Later, she explained why she transferred from Bancroft Junior High in Hollywood.

“I can’t think of any other school where I could have this creative freedom,” she said. “To be able to go to high school with like minds is incredible. This isn’t work. It’s what I want to be doing with my life.”