All the right moves

UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. -- Talent is free.

It's the lessons and dance shoes and leotards that cost money.

The Center of Contemporary Arts, a community-based arts center in the St. Louis area, offers a program aimed at giving its best young dancers a real chance at becoming professionals.

Top dance schools give scholarships, but COCA does something more. Promising young dancers between the ages of 12 and 18 audition for a spot in the center's pre-professional dance program.

If they're one of the 37 dancers accepted and have financial need, they receive free lessons, free dance shoes, often even tights and leotards. The center also provides a van that can pick students up for classes at no charge; helps with audition tapes; gives complimentary tickets to watch theater and dance performances in the city; provides opportunities to take master classes with the best visiting choreographers; and teaches classes on nutrition and injury prevention.

Student tutors from nearby Washington University help the youths study between evening dance classes. While the dancers work hard to advance their skills, those who organize the program do what they can to encourage those efforts. COCA believes, because of the network of services it provides, the program is unlike any other offered at a community-based arts center.

Ran out, bought suitcase

One teenager who was accepted into a prestigious dance program elsewhere didn't have a suitcase, so COCA's executive director Stephanie Riven ran out and bought him one.

And the dancers get plenty of opportunities to perform on stage in front of all types of audiences.

"Early on, one of our students was performing in a program in front of a juvenile detention group. He said he saw his best friend from childhood in the audience," Riven said.

The program isn't limited to dancers from struggling families. Students come from the toniest private schools and from the toughest neighborhoods. Families that can afford to pay for everything, do. Families that can't, apply for financial aid.

The not-for-profit arts center, which pursues grants and private donations, offers dance classes to about 1,500 people annually and has an operating budget of around $3.5 million. About $700,000 goes to fund free arts education, like outreach arts programs in public schools, about $150,000 of that funds the pre-professional dance program and scholarships.

'I realized I could do that'

On a recent night, an advanced jazz class at the center drew 10 students together for an hour and a half of practice. Barefooted dancers stretch at the start of class. From a lithe dancer with prim, neatly pulled back hair to a student with silver rings and a Care Bear tattoo, the kids physically have little in common.

But they all respond to spoken dance cues as though it's effortless.

The dancers slip on jazz shoes and twist their soles through a box of resin in the corner to keep them on their marks as they dance. They move across the floor in combinations, dancing to Enigma and drum recordings by the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart and then the soothing voice of Al Jarreau.

One of the students in the class, 15-year-old Lauren Morrow of Hazelwood, has been dancing since she was 5, and has already spent about four years in the program.

"I saw the older kids, the things they were doing, the places they got to go. I realized I could do that, too," she said of why she's so dedicated to the dance classes.

Another student, Brian Moore, 18, of St. Louis is auditioning for the top dance colleges in the country. He's already completed prestigious summer programs at the Juilliard School, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Jacob's Pillow in Massachusetts.

"I have to do school first. School comes first. It'll back me up," he said. But he intends to dance on stage after that, and his teachers think he could have what it takes. His mother, a seamstress, supports his efforts; she's making costumes for an upcoming performance.

Moore goes to Lafayette Senior High School, where he said the football coach lets him work out with the team to stay in shape.

"They open doors for you. They show you a bigger world," he said of COCA. "I'm ready to leave and go out in the world. It's going to be the dance world."

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On the Net

Center of Contemporary Arts: www.cocastl.org