Pointe Well-Taken : Las Palmas Students Jump at the Chance to Learn Ballet Basics--and Elegance

Few Las Palmas Elementary School students have been exposed to classical dance, and seldom are they told that they are princes or princesses. Most come from impoverished households, some with only one parent, and others are still mastering English.

But every Thursday, a group of them give up their lunch period, study hall or gym class to learn to respect their innate elegance and stand tall like royalty.

About 70 students from the San Clemente school take one of two weekly 45-minute ballet classes taught by Larry Rosenberg, a dance instructor at UC Irvine and an artistic director of the Coast Ballet Theatre in San Clemente, who conducts classes at the school for free.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for our kids,” said school Principal Doug Kramer, who added that because the school has no dance teacher, few students had ever experienced classical dance.

The third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students line up in rows, take off their sneakers, then follow Rosenberg’s lively instruction. “Show me your toes, pointed hard!” he called out, dressed in sweat pants, a T-shirt and dance shoes.

The kids, in their jeans or shorts and without a mirror or bar, learn some of the simpler ballet positions. After warm-ups of plies and stretches, they learn jumps and moves like the saute, ronde de jambe, glissade and pas de chat. Rosenberg, 43, accompanied by classical music from a portable stereo, says: “Up and back, go, stretch!”

He said he teaches the class as if he were teaching a ballet company, discouraging slouching, laziness and sloppy posture. “The natural elegance is inborn, you just have to ask it of yourselves,” he said.

When they are dancing, he encourages them to hold their heads up and push themselves, and the strain of that is both welcome and challenging to the class.

Some of the novice dancers’ faces strained with effort as they displayed their tenuous grasp of the grace the moves require. One boy laughingly whimpered, “Ow, ow, ow!” when he sat with his legs open on the floor, stretching. “This is torture!” he cried.

Often Rosenberg asks students who feel they have mastered a jump to come to the front of the class and show it off. About 15 students eagerly waved their hands Thursday to volunteer. Two of them demonstrated so much promise in previous classes that Rosenberg offered them scholarships to the Coast Ballet Theatre.

Marquita Taylor and Ian Chambers, both 10, go there every Friday. “You get to do a lot of neat things and stuff,” Chambers said Thursday.

Taylor added: “The teacher is good at it. I like how he does the jumps.”

As the class ended, the students were reluctant to leave. “It’s very nice and it’s a little bit hard, doing the splits and jumping,” said Nelson Dena, 9.

By the time the class was over, Melissa Calvillo’s bangs were plastered to her forehead with sweat. “I like it, but I don’t know why,” she said softly.

Rosenberg began volunteering at the school in January, after getting such an enthusiastic reaction to a performance there.

“I think it makes a big difference in their lives. For many of them, being told to stand like a prince or a princess and hold their bodies erect creates a feeling about themselves that they may not otherwise experience,” and it lets them discover “an inborn royalty which we all have.”

After Thursday’s class, Rosenberg said, “I’m always surprised by their enthusiasm and how much they remember.” He said he had not worked with the students for several weeks because they had just returned from school vacation.

But upon returning, “you just see their eyes light up,” he said, adding that having an appreciation of what it does for them is what keeps him coming back.