LET’S DANCE: Once a door-opener for aspiring...

LET’S DANCE: Once a door-opener for aspiring dancers, tour jetes are giving way to uprocks and tictocs as hip hop works its way into private dance schools. Ballet is still a technique builder, says Norine B. Xavier of the West Coast Dance Theater in Northridge, but jazz and hip hop are the “happening trend.” About a third of the Valley’s dance studios offering ballet also offer hip hop or funk.

DANCE FEVER: Dance boosts self-esteem, CalArts teachers and students have discovered. Several kids from the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys have improved their grades since participating in the college’s dance outreach program, which espouses discipline and teamwork through modern and African dance. . . . And more schools are joining the program.

SUNDANCE KIDS: No more fluorescent lighting for dance students at CSUN. A new dance studio that boasts floor-to-ceiling windows opens next fall. . . . Designed 32 years ago by dance professor Paulette Shafranski, above, when she arrived at CSUN, it’s modeled after the Interlocken Arts Academy in Michigan.

MOONDANCE: Back when dancing conjured images of gowns and moonlight, Debbie Reynolds got her start in Hollywood as a 16-year-old Miss Burbank. The Valley girl only entered the 1948 competition for the free silk blouse offered all participants, but her victory earned her contracts with Warner Bros. and MGM--and professional dance lessons. . . . Years later, she opened her own studio in North Hollywood, which has lured the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson.

RHYTHM NATION: Today, it’s “highly aerobic, culturally rich and musically rhythmic” dancing that people want, which Kobla Ladzekpo credits for the popularity of West African drumming and dance. . . . Ladzekpo, of Ghana, has been teaching the dance form at CalArts for more than 20 years and offers free workshops each Saturday at the Pacoima Recreation Center.