Making their moves.

Think dancing a major role in the annual recital is nerve-wracking? How about performing in a dance you choreographed? Before a paying audience. On a professional stage. [] That's what a gutsy group of dance students do each spring in Santa Barbara, California, where the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance, an organization that publishes directories and coordinates performances, presents the Teen Choreographers Showcase. [] Putting your creative efforts on the line can be terrifying, but as 16-year-old Ryan Zermeno has learned, it gets easier. "When I started choreographing I felt more scared," says Zermeno, who has made three dances for the showcase in as many years. "But this year I thought 'I'll do whatever I want, and if they don't like it, fine'."

DANCE ALLIANCE executive director Julie McLeod designed the program, now in its ninth year, to help teens interested in dance become more comfortable taking bigger risks. Every winter she finds about fifteen students age 13 to 19 who want to make their own dances. The pieces each must run a maximum of five minutes, and either be created by the students on their own or in collaboration with friends. Though the Dance Alliance posts notices in studios and advertises the program on their website, many students learn about the showcase through word-of-mouth. They sign a contract to present one performance of their work in April, and to help sell tickets and publicize the event. They're also assigned a mentor of their choosing, often a teacher at their dance studio, and are encouraged to attend a workshop titled "I want to choreograph ... So now what do I do?"

Zerneno made his first piece for himself and his two sisters and struggled with that same question. But over the years he's grown bolder, breaking the boundaries of the dance form he studies most intensely, flamenco. "We had less experience at the beginning, so I choreographed rumbas, tangos, and bulerias because they were familiar," he said. "But last year I had my sister step out of her dress, and she was wearing pants underneath. We added some ballet and finished with flamenco."

This May will mark the eighth annual Teen Choreographers Showcase. The performance usually draws an audience of about 500, so this year it's moving from the Lobero Theatre to the larger Marge Luke Theatre. Past participants have gone on to study dance and choreography at schools like Juilliard, UC Los Angeles and UC Irvine, and Sarah Lawrence College. One alumna won a summer scholarship to the Alvin Ailey School. Another now dances with California's Peninsula Ballet Theatre.

MIXING DANCE FORMS is a big attraction for young dancers taking most of their classes in ballet. As 15-year-old Samantha Nielsen says, "We like to show ballet dancers aren't just bunheads." For her first time in the showcase last year, she and two friends choreographed a ballet to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Higher Ground." "We hadn't tried it on pointe shoes and we had used moves we couldn't do on pointe," she says. "We found out we liked the way it looked in soft shoes better."

Another happy accident: one of Nielsen's dancers dropped out, making the work a trio. "I learned that an odd number of dancers is usually more interesting than an even number," she says.

Nineteen-year-old Cherise Richards, on the other hand, comes to the showcase this year with plenty of experience: She began performing her own solos at age 11, while studying under ex-Nikolais dancer Suzee Grilley, who heads her own company in Ashland, Oregon. But as a freshman at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Richards feared she would have to stop presenting her work. "I was thinking what venue can I put this in, and there was no open space on campus," she says.

Whether the dance is folk, flamenco, swing or ballet, whether it's the choreographer's first piece or fifth, the Dance Alliance student choreographers agree that dancing your own work is a rush.

"At first I was worried but it made me more proud," Nielsen says. "And I was confident dancing it because I knew the emotions that were in it."

Visit www.sbdancealliance.org or call 805.966.6950.

Rachel Howard has just finished a memoir to be published by Dutton this year.