Turning Points : St. Joseph Ballet Helps at-Risk Youths Change Lives, Study Finds

Flor de Liz (Flower) Alzate, 18, remembers being sent to the principal’s office at age 12 after having a fight in school. She used to wear heavy makeup to look older and be popular, and her grades were going downhill. But worse, “I was almost going to be in a gang,” she said.

Then one day, after about two years of ballet classes at St. Joseph Ballet Company in Santa Ana, the Tustin High School senior decided to start wearing less makeup and begin working harder in school. When her dance instructor asked why, “I said, ‘Because I’m happy now.’ ”

Now she takes honors courses, maintains a 3.5 grade-point average, and was recently accepted to study dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

Alzate is one of 270 students from Orange County taking dance class at St. Joseph Ballet, where youths ages 9 to 19 and all virtually from low-income neighborhoods receive free dance training.

Many of the dance students--and their instructors--have long believed that the program helps them change their lives.

Now there is proof.

A yearlong study completed last month shows that the dancers have higher self-esteem than children with similar backgrounds but no dance training, and that they believe they can take responsibility to affect changes for themselves.

“I knew these children were different,” said Julie Siri, a social worker who conducted the study funded by the James Irvine Foundation, an organization that in 1992 awarded St. Joseph Ballet a two-year, $65,000 grant.

To do it, she went to St. Joseph Ballet several times a week for two months and gave standardized tests to 113 students.

Siri, a social worker at a San Gabriel Valley hospice, said a key finding was that kids at St. Joseph Ballet sought validation internally and rejected the approval that some of their peers lived by: “If you want to feel good, come and join my gang or take these drugs,” she said.

The “Evaluation of St. Joseph Ballet’s Impact on Inner-City Youth” also found that the average grade-point average of the dancers, who attend 68 schools, was 3.0 for the 1992-1993 school year, which Siri considers remarkable for students living in crowded households where more than one language is spoken.

According to the study, the program provides the students with a form of intervention that can save them from crime and teen-age pregnancy. A 1993 Report on the Condition of Children in Orange County, commissioned by the Board of Supervisors, found that those social ills were increasing dramatically throughout the county.

But intervention is not due to the dancing alone, Siri determined. “The environment is more important than the ballet per se. It’s having an enriched environment.”

That is what Beth Burns, the founder and artistic director, has aimed to provide. “I have a passionate belief in the worth and dignity and ability of young people regardless of their neighborhood, ethnicity and struggling financial situation,” she said.

Burns, 37, who lives in Newport Beach, used to belong to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. Now she belongs almost exclusively to her dance students.

One evening last week, Burns helped Alzate and another dancer, Odette Molero, 18, who was also accepted at the North Carolina school, to compose letters to possible scholarship sources. “Dream, ladies!” she told the teen-agers. “Dream, don’t be shy. Because they don’t want to help people with little puny goals.”

When she is not teaching classes or being a role model to the students, she is planning concerts and community performances. “When you really believe in something, it’s easy to work for, and a joy to make it happen. I really believe that communicating to children how lovable they are . . . can transform their lives.”

Burns said the findings in Siri’s study attest to what she already knew instinctively. “It’s a simple and dramatic confirmation that we’re helping these children have opportunities they would not” otherwise enjoy.

The opportunities available to some of these children are scarce, and the pull of juvenile delinquency is strong. One group of boys at the dance school comes from neighborhoods in Santa Ana so dangerous that they walk to classes in a big circle to avoid being singled out and isolated by gang members, Burns said.

Many of the dancers know they could have been pulled into delinquency, but instead decided to dance. “We love it!” says Liz Lira, 12, one of the participants who comes “every single day except Sunday.”

The junior high school student said, “Where I live, you can hear gunshots, and you can hear drunk people arguing. You come here and you feel safe.”

St. Joseph Ballet has given her and classmate Thelma Macias, 12, the courage to leave negative things behind. Macias is one of eight children, and both her parents work from the late afternoon until early in the morning.

Sitting on the floor in her leotard and bare feet last week, she explained that the staff keeps a watchful eye on her when her family cannot. “They notice our changes and explain to us what might happen, and that gets you thinking, and then you go back to the right direction,” she said.

Some of Macias’ friends have been pulled in the wrong direction, though.

“I have one friend that’s on parole and a friend that’s on speed,” she said. “The friend on parole was supposedly caught tagging and stealing. They’re all, ‘do this, do this,’ and I’m like, ‘no thanks.’ ” Other kids she knows are getting involved in gangs. “It’s like a fraternity, but in a dumb way,” she said.

Instead of gang involvement, Alzate, Lira and Macias are committed to long-term dance involvement, and all say they want to become professional ballerinas. “The dance world is always going to be in my life,” Alzate said.