Dancing for Joy : Russian Couple Translates Ballet in Tijuana

The ballet teacher shouts “Mas arriba! Mas arriba!” in a Russian accent, and the 6- and 7-year-olds struggle to push themselves higher on their tippy toes.

Valeri Tchekachev and his ballerina wife, Tatiana Tchekacheva, lead the group of 20 boys and girls around in a circle on the hardwood floor of the school’s converted ballet studio.

The kids from the surrounding dusty shantytown have their hands in the air and big smiles on their faces. It is only their second week of ballet classes.

“I want poor children in Tijuana to open their eyes, to look at the big world,” says Tchekachev, 46, who with his 42-year-old wife made the 12,000-mile trip from St. Petersburg.

The couple, graduates of the Kirov Ballet school and former students of the same man who instructed Baryshnikov and Nureyev, will teach for a year at Colegio La Esperanza--or School of Hope.

All of the school’s 250 students--from kindergartners to sixth graders--attend classes twice a week.

One of the five classrooms at the 8-year-old, two-story hilltop school--accessible only on bumpy dirt roads--has been transformed into a dance studio. Brightly colored tile mosaics decorate the curved white walls in the naturally lit studio, but mirrors and permanent barres have yet to be installed. Until that happens, students are using three sets of plastic barres.

The only ballet slippers are on the feet of the teachers. The children dance in their socks, some of them muddy with holes. There are no colorful leotards or frilly tutus--just usual school clothes like jeans, skirts and shirts.

The teachers communicate with the kids mostly with body language and facial expressions because their Spanish is so limited.

They did, however, pick up a few key words during a week of intensive Spanish tutoring: “Mas arriba” (farther up), “listo” (ready) and “silencio!” (silence!).

Every now and then, Tchekachev looks for help from the woman at the piano, who plays Chopin and other classical music and doubles as a Russian-Spanish interpreter.

Bringing the Tchekachevs to Tijuana was Christine Brady’s idea. She founded Colegio La Esperanza and the San Diego-based Americas Foundation, which paid for the school with grants and donations. The school is about 30 miles south of San Diego.

Brady, who attended Princeton and Stanford and was a Navy physicist in San Diego for eight years before moving to Tijuana in 1987 to work at an orphanage, was a ballet dancer as a teenager. She believes the ballet classes will expose the children to culture and provide structure in their lives.

“Ballet gives children tremendous stamina and discipline,” she says. “I think they benefit emotionally and spiritually.”

So Brady asked a friend in St. Petersburg to go over to the Kirov Ballet and find out if any dancers would be interested in coming to Mexico. The friend found the Tchekachevs, who have taught children around the world and who liked the idea of being closer to a daughter who lives in Los Angeles.

After eight months of arranging visas and transportation, the couple arrived in Tijuana in mid-April. Their trip and the new ballet studio were paid for with a $30,000 donation from the Carl J. Herzog Foundation.

Brady hopes the Russian dancers will bring recognition to the school that, in turn, will help feed the constant need for donations.

She also hopes providing a well-rounded education will inspire the children to stay in school when they leave the School of Hope.

The ballet class is a hit so far with many students.

First-grader Reyna Yuripsi Garcia Arballo says she likes ballet because “it’s very pretty.”