SPOTLIGHT : TALES TOLD IN DANCE : Work Built on Words of St. Joseph Ballet Members

The more than 200 youths who dance in the St. Joseph Ballet company don’t have much time for daydreaming.

Ranging in age from 9 to 19, troupe members, many of whom come from the county’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, balance the demands of school, jobs, family and peers to spend up to six days a week studying dance under the watchful eye of company founder Beth Burns and a handful of professional instructors. They’ve been working particularly hard lately, preparing for what might well be the high point in many of these youngsters’ lives: the St. Joseph Ballet spring concert, “Rise,” a program of new and reprised works today through Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

“Rise” includes three works that the ballet troupe premiered last spring at the Irvine theater: “Mother Me,” set to tunes by Bobby McFerrin; “Moving, Remembering, Arriving,” performed to Aaron Copland’s Three Latin American Sketches, and “HomeFree,” a celebratory dance set to the music of the Ugandan group Samite, which the Santa Ana-based company performed at the December opening of the Bowers Kidseum.

Headlining the concert is the premiere of “Talitha Koum,” a series of five dances choreographed by Burns. Focusing on such themes as family unity, street violence, grief and compassion, the dances were inspired by candid dialogue between Burns and members of the company. In the performance, recorded excerpts from the interviews combine with an original score by Eduardo del Barrio, abstract canvases donated by Kansas artist Rita Blitt, costumes by Jennifer Langeberg and the students’ own black and white photography to provide a backdrop for the dances.

Although the interviews began as casual conversations recorded over the past few months, Burns says she has long felt the need to share them with a larger audience.

“I’ve spent so many hours talking with the children about their lives, I wanted our audiences to be able to listen to them, too,” explained Burns, 39, a former member of the Sisters of St. Joseph religious order who founded the ballet in 1983 in a church basement. “As a community, we need to hear more from these children.

“They have hard lives. They deal every day with their family’s financial concerns, teen pregnancy, gang pressure and gang violence. . . . It’s a very different world than the one many people have grown up with. That’s why we need to try so hard to understand them.”

Burns, a graduate of Loyola Marymount, has been a student of dance since she was 10. With funding from the Ahmanson Foundation and the blessing of her religious superiors, she started the St. Joseph Ballet with the goal of giving inner-city youths a sense of accomplishment, discipline and self-worth through dance. She left the order in 1989 and now leads the company full time with the help of a three-person staff and a handful of instructors, many of whom have danced professionally with international companies.

St. Joseph Ballet operates from a 4,000-square-foot office and studio donated by the Fiesta Marketplace Assn. in downtown Santa Ana. With an annual operating budget of $300,000--most of it donated by individuals and corporations--the company provides dance training and performance opportunities to low-income youths, 96% of whom receive full or partial scholarships. Burns figures that more than 25,000 young people have participated in the program.

When she discussed the idea of recording the interviews with her students, their response was “very generous and very honest,” said Burns, who, with writer Brian Glassier, culled 15 minutes of the children’s comments from hours of recorded conversations.

At the concert, audiences will hear the voice of a young boy as he talks candidly about the shooting death of his 19-year-old cousin. A girl recounts a drug high that was “like, better than counseling”; another recalls watching a friend lie bleeding from a gunshot wound on his mother’s doorstep. Friends thought the boy would recover, but he soon died, causing the girl to remark with a hollow little laugh, “I guess things didn’t turn out the way we thought.”

Not all the recollections are harsh. In fact, said Burns, the predominant mood she found while talking to the youths was one of hope and self-reliance, even in the face of adversity. Many of the excerpts reveal a strong bond with their families, especially mothers, whom some children describe in almost awe-struck tones. The children talk about the peace and sense of accomplishment they get from dancing, their respect for their ethnic heritage and their plans for the future.

“You look at these children and their challenges and the glorious thing is that they’re not all sad and depressed,” Burns said. “They have so much hope. People who come to our concerts for the first time have no idea how much they can receive from these kids.”

The title of “Talitha Koum” comes from a Bible passage from the Gospel of St. Mark that tells a story of Jesus entering a home where a grieving family surrounds the body of a 12-year-old. Jesus lays his hand on the body and says, “Talitha, koum,” or “Little girl, get up.” The child rises from the bed and begins to walk around the room.

Burns, who says she was struck by the passage years ago during a spiritual retreat, says it’s a perfect analogy for her kids.

“Everyone in the Bible story thinks the child is dead, and there are a lot of inner-city children who may sometimes feel like their spirits are dying,” she said. “I think ‘Talitha Koum’ shows them, and us, that they have a power deep within them to help them rise up.”

The opening sequence in “Talitha Koum” serves as an overture for the rest of the piece.

Del Barrio is a local composer who has worked with Herb Alpert and Earth, Wind and Fire, and coordinated SJB’s Young Artist program in 1991. His music, a combination of synthesized pop, jazz, classical and Latin sounds, rises gently behind the children’s voices as they comment on topics ranging from the meaning of beauty to drug use to self worth. The comments fade away, the music builds and a chorus of about 50 dancers perform their first scene.

Family, especially the link between mother and child, is the focus of the second scene. Children’s voices describe in admiring tones the way their parents work hard to keep the family together and the sacrifices they make for their children.

“The choreography in Scene 2 has a very clear symbolism,” Burns explained. “Everywhere, older dancers are constantly holding, supporting the younger dancers.”

The mood changes dramatically in Scene 3, which examines street violence.

“For most of these kids, it’s not a question of how do you deal with violence,” Burns explained. “It’s a given, it’s a constant backdrop to their lives.” The dancing here is gestural, said Burns, frequently evoking a sense of listlessness and lack of direction, as well as rage. Blitt’s backdrop is torn in places and littered with bits of old newspaper and angry red splotches. Langeberg’s costumes follow suit and del Barrio’s music is punctuated with dissonant, almost Stravinsky-like passages.

Burns says she’s particularly pleased with the fourth segment. Featuring seven of her advanced dancers, it serves as a transition between the disillusionment of Scene 3 and the jubilant finale that is Scene 5.

“I especially like Scene 4 because it’s about finding a spiritual haven where you can let your spirit grieve, and then move on,” Burns said. “None of us gets out of life without having grief at one time or another.

“One day, one of my girls described to me how her grandmother had died and how her parents had to go to Mexico to bury her. She was sad, but she told me that at ballet, she was able to pour all that sadness into dance. She said the dance is like a healer to her.”

* What: St. Joseph Ballet Spring Concert, “Rise.”

* When: Tonight and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m.

* Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The theater is on Campus near Bridge Road, across from the Marketplace mall.

* Wherewithal: $8 general admission, $25 tickets include admission and a donation to the ballet’s scholarship fund. Parking is $3 for evening performances, $4 for matinee.

* Where to call: (714) 854-4646.

KID STUFF

IN NEWPORT BEACH: MAJOR ART, DUDE

Works by students in Santa Ana’s Special Studio program and Newport Harbor Art Museum’s Partners series will be on view Friday through July 2 in “Major Art/Minor Artists” at Newport Harbor Art Museum. $2 to $4; free to children under 12 and to all on Tuesdays. (714) 759-1122.

IN ANAHEIM: HERITAGE DAY

Kids can sample a slice of western U.S. history and get their socks grubby to boot on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the rugged Oak Canyon Nature Center. The day’s offerings include clogging, butter-churning and live entertainment. FREE. (714) 998-8380.

IN COSTA MESA: ‘PICTURE THIS!’

This Pacific Symphony family concert Saturday at 10 and 11:30 a.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center pairs performances of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” with screen projections of artwork by local children. $8 to $10. (714) 556-2787.