From bullets to ballet: at THEARC, Washington ballet reaches out to the community.

The yellow school bus passes beat-up apartment complexes and newly minted townhouses. Pulling into the parking lot, a gaggle of 6- and 7-year-olds crane their necks to see their destination. Before them stands a new 110,000-square-foot complex housing a state-of-the-art theater, dance and music studios, a girls' middle school, a recreation center, and a medical clinic. With its brick and glass edifice aglow in the fading afternoon, THEARC (officially Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation Campus), situated east of the Anacostia River, serves the most disadvantaged population in Washington, D.C. It's a neighborhood more familiar with bullets than ballet.

Yet THEARC is home to a variety of arts outreach programs, among them The Washington Ballet@THEARC. The ballet already had an outreach effort, DanceDC, in public elementary schools. A 12-week classical ballet curriculum that rotates to first and second graders in more than seven schools, DanceDC began in 1999. It's now part of a three-pronged program that costs The Washington Ballet $679,000 a year. The ballet also now offers full scholarships for handpicked youngsters to continue training in a program where they are bused, at the ballet's expense, to classes at THEARC after school. And since the center's 2005 opening, THEARC has offered 30 additional classes for more than 275 students duplicating The Washington Ballet's curriculum at its main academy.

"I came to D.C. with two simple goals," explains Septime Webre, the company's artistic director since 1999. "One was to further develop The Washington Ballet into a major nationally ranked ballet company. The second was to connect the ballet more firmly to the social fabric of the Washington, D.C. community and to have it reflect the city more thoroughly." That meant not bypassing historically poor and neglected areas like Anacostia for the affluence of northwest, where the ballet's long-established school remains.

Building a ballet program in southeast D.C. means working with parents or guardians who may be single or underemployed, as Katrina Toews, director of The Washington Ballet@THEARC, learned this past year. While a parent of a first-year ballet student at the main academy pays $1,400 annually, at THEARC tuition is on a sliding scale from a full subsidy, requiring only a $20 registration fee, to $280 a year. The ballet also subsidizes uniforms. And Toews keeps registration simple: two sheets versus a multipage booklet across town. "We don't ask for a pay stub, because it might feel like one more roadblock," Toews explains. "If it's too challenging, it's not going to happen."

But both Webre and Toews insist that the studio in the southeast is not social policy in action. They hope eventually to provide the same 12-year training program at THEARC that exists at the main academy. Both have been surprised by the interest in classical ballet above hip hop, African dance, and modern. "People want the structure and clarity for their children," Toews says. The teachers use a graded syllabus based on the late Washington Ballet founder Mary Day's system, which emphasizes a pure technique with elements of Cecchetti and Vaganova.

The students seem to love it as well. As they file in from the parking lot, their excitement is palpable. It's uniform day and eyes widen at the crisp white T-shirts and socks, black footless tights for the boys, and baby blue leotards and pink tights for the girls. That is, until one outspoken young man holds up his tights, wrinkles his nose and declares, "These look like ladies' stockings!"

Toews doesn't blink. As an instructor who taught under Mary Day at the company school for several years, she has plenty of class experience. Within minutes she's lined up 14 young men and marched them into the expansive 40' by 60' studio. "It is a privilege to come and dance in this space, gentlemen," she informs them. "I'm looking for a position in the center." And she waits.

The class quickly comes to order, and a sense of pride pervades the room as students line up at the barre. "I took ballet growing up," says Monica Warren-Jones, while waiting to pick up her 7-year-old daughter Simone. "I like the discipline that it provides and its artistic attributes: You get music, physical activity, and you build poise and self-esteem." A community development professional, Warren-Jones is grateful that her daughter receives top-notch training at an affordable price in an incomparable studio setting.

Ingrid Parks-Gavin, a single mother of two daughters, lives just down the street on Mississippi Avenue, where she, too, grew up acutely aware of limited opportunities in her Anacostia neighborhood. That's why she didn't hesitate to enroll Niya, her 11-year-old. "I knew about the reputation of the ballet company. I know that if you ever want to pursue dance professionally, the first discipline you need to have is ballet."

For older students who hope to continue in dance, THEARC puts essential training within their reach. Leggy 17-year-old Alessandra Sippio wants to dance with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater one day. Her parents drive 40 miles from Columbia, Maryland, three days a week so she can study with Ebony Hamilton, a former student of Mary Day. Hamilton has been in Dance Theatre of Harlem's junior company and toured in The Lion King. "This program helps me with my weaknesses," Sippio says, sweaty from Hamilton's small but high-demand advanced technique class.

Artistic director Webre envisions a time when his ballet company will reach all corners of its home city. "The more our company reflects our city and has ties to different parts of it, the more our success is assured." That's just good business, even for a ballet company. But for Webre there's more: "Ballet offers focus and discipline. Young children do better academically if they study ballet. It provides a structure for kids' lives, many of whom don't have much structure."

Plus, he's noticed how visitors, young and old, react when they enter the ballet studios at THEARC. "People stand up straighter and show their better selves."

For more information: www.washingtonballet.org/thearc and www.thearedc.org.

Lisa Traiger, a co-chair of the Dance Critics Association, writes on dance from Maryland.