California dreaming comes true.

The T-shirt reads, "Deal with it," and the woman who wears it clearly means business as she deftly guides a late afternoon rehearsal that echoes with the sounds of young Californians stamping, swaying, turning, and collapsing in unison. "We need more smiling. A lot more, a lot more!" she urges when the atmosphere becomes heavy with concentration. On cue, a child stands to read a poem he has written, and his words intermingle with the dancers' movements as a musical accompaniment.

Beth Burns, artistic director of Saint Joseph Ballet, has encouraged many smiles since she founded this company for teenagers in Santa Ana fifteen years ago--smiles, laughter, love, and so much more. Over the years the Saint Joseph Ballet has offered inner-city youths opportunities to avoid the temptations of gangs, drugs, and teen pregnancies by meeting the transforming challenges of the arts. Dance training of professional caliber, however, serves only as a starting point. Burns is on a sacred mission, armed to empower her students with determination and self-respect. Into their world of life-or-death choices, she injects a healthy dose of hope.

Although she had been dancing since age ten, Burns chose college over a performing career. After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, she joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange and began to teach high school students. As time passed, however, she felt that there was something more she could do to change the lives of her young students and their communities. At the suggestion of one of the sisters, Burns revived her passion for the arts. She applied to the Ahmanson Foundation for a grant to start a free summer dance program for twenty-five Santa Ana children. She soon received it, and eventually she left the order to devote herself fully to her dream of a ballet company.

"This is the right place for me to express what I find meaningful in dance," Burns explains. "It's the triangle of the spiritual, the social, and the aesthetic. Our mission to inner-city youth through the arts has served thirty-two thousand kids over fifteen years, making Saint Joseph Ballet one of the oldest and largest organizations of its kind. And I think that's really wonderful." As a nonprofit organization, Saint Joseph Ballet is funded by grants and private contributions. The organization makes its home in central Santa Ana's Fiesta Marketplace. While the area has all the flavor of an old Mexican town, it also lies at the heart of some of the most multiethnic, impoverished, and violence-ridden neighborhoods in Orange County.

Most of Saint Joseph Ballet's students come from Hispanic, African American, and Asian communities, and most receive full scholarships that cover classes (two to six per week, including master classes with such teachers as Miami City Ballet's Edward Villella), practice clothes, shoes, costumes, performance opportunities, and field trips to venues such as the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Maximum enrollment is 330, but the average attendance hovers around 220 a week (about forty are boys).

Burns asks her dancers for time, energy, and an openness to new ideas. Her teaching style and her choreography reflect her goals of communicating positively and stretching boundaries. Her performance pieces explore such diverse themes as dreamscapes, the search for self-identity, death, and the loss of childhood.

Classes range from beginning through advanced ballet to West African, modern, and jazz. Children have the annual opportunity to perform in two small productions and one full-scale professional evening at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. For ten-year-old Victoria Peinado, the concerts are "the most fun. It just makes me feel happy. Everyone is watching. I used to think I couldn't do anything because I'm small, but now I feel independent and accomplished."

Mauricio Alconedo, one of her most accomplished male dancers, was discovered by Burns six years ago at Saint Joseph Ballet's community outreach program, "Dancefree Weeks." (This series of weeklong dance workshops is offered free of charge to public schools in some of the poorest communities of Orange County.) Alconedo, who hopes for a career as a professional dancer, is both articulate and poised for a fourteen year old. He remembers his tryout, when "Beth told me that I was talented and asked if I wanted to join. I said yes. I liked their routine, and that made me want to dance. With ballet, it's like the only thing I have where I can have fun--except when I'm on the basketball court."

But it's not always that easy. Alconedo freely reveals the tougher aspects of teenage life: "I come from a neighborhood where there are gangs around. It's pretty hard, but I don't let them drive me into being any part of it. I don't really pay attention because my mind is always on dancing, and I'm here most of the time. "Once I came here, my mind got stronger and my thinking more positive. If you're hanging out on the streets and you have friends who are, too, they encourage you to do bad things. My family supports me, though, all the way. They come to watch me and my brother dance. When it comes time to perform, it's the highlight of the whole year.

"Beth is teaching us how to think positively, so that you're not dancing on the same level each year. You're always working hard to improve, to move to the next level of ability, to do what you thought you couldn't do. I like the challenge. If there's no challenge, then it's not fun." To Burns, Alconedo possesses "enigmatic strength. He has a very deep spirit, and we want to keep encouraging him."

Because Burns has the gift of making hard work seem like fun, Saint Joseph Ballet overflows with children who have learned the joys of testing their limits, refining their strengths, and defining their goals. She is quick to point out that Saint Joseph Ballet's mission is not "preprofessional dance training--we rarely encourage kids to pursue a performing career unless they are particularly suited for it," but there are a talented few, like Alconedo, who do receive "little suggestive encouragements."

Flor de Liz Alzate, one of Burns's most gifted alumni, received that encouragement. Now in her senior year on scholarship at North Carolina School for the Arts, Alzate fondly recalls her more than ten years with the company and the grounding she received there: "To me, Saint Joseph Ballet is an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to find out who you are, to find out what strengths you have and what strengths you need to build. It will direct you. It might not be in dance, but it will teach you discipline, perseverance, and a love for work, because without work you're not going to get anywhere--even if you have the talent. It's not for everyone; some people will not come out knowing how special it is. It's for those who learn to appreciate it."

Choreographer Donald McKayle, a board member of the company for five years, worked with Alzate two summers ago at the American Dance Festival. He says that "her work ethic must have been gained in part by what she did at Saint Joseph Ballet. She was always prepared, always ready to field criticism and to take what was important to her and come back with her developed work. It was really a joy to have her there, and she was an inspiration to other students as well.

"She is also a very gifted choreographer, and I expect to see a great deal from her."

Alzate credits Burns with the belief that she will succeed: "Just knowing that Beth started the company with nothing, with just an idea, makes you have a bravery about taking risks. I'm not afraid of going out and auditioning; I don't feel like I won't be able to make it. That's the kind of ideal that you learn here at Saint Joseph Ballet, that you get what you ask for. I know how hard it is, but I still believe. It's just that now I have different eyes."

This vision is shared by Sonia and Christiana Melendez, sixteen-year-old identical twins who have danced with the company for six years. For Sonia, Saint Joseph Ballet is a place to express herself and to be challenged: "With dance, there's always something you can learn. It opens up your mind. Whenever you think, `Oh, I'm almost there,' you never are!"

Christiana says she loves to dance for the excitement and the variety it brings: "The different classes, the many types of music, and all the teachers--that's what inspires me to dance hard. I love just being able to move to music, and performing. You look at things from a different perspective. Instead of doing nothing or instead of getting into trouble, there's always been Saint Joseph Ballet to turn to. It's a very comfortable place; you don't feel pressured, you don't feel competition. It helps kids who want the dream of dancing to come true."

McKayle says, "It is quite amazing what is happening at Saint Joseph--not only with the children who are there but also with the children and the families they are associating with. Beth's choreography brings out the best in the children, and I think she has a very special gift where they are concerned. The respect she gives them and the respect they give back to her is so beautiful to watch. She has the heart of her audiences as well; her performances are sold out, and that's a big feat here in Orange County."

Burns and the children are currently rehearsing for their upcoming spring concert at the Irvine Barclay Theatre (May 27-30); included is a new piece, Unearthing, based on personal family stories that the dancers revealed during cultural identity workshops with Mexican American psychologists. And she is looking forward to bringing more youth into the company. Saint Joseph Ballet has launched a $7.5-million building and endowment campaign that has raised $3.2 million to date.

"I don't want to add mediocrity to the world," Burns says. "I have a philosophy of aiming high. I love the idea of showing people what inner-city kids can do. I treasure those full moments of radiance when children use dance as a means to rejoice. What we see onstage should somehow be in relation to our own interior being. It is compelling when you see dancing that has grown out of what is most important and primary in life."

Free-lance writer Pamela Hurley Diamond specializes in the performing arts.