Penny Frank.

What is the greatest reward a teacher can have? Penny Frank, senior modern dance teacher at New York City's Performing Arts division of La Guardia High School of Music and Art, doesn't hesitate. "It's when a student comes up to you and says, `Thank you, Ms. Frank, for all you've taught me.'"

Sound corny? Frank is as frank as her name. She doesn't beat around the bush with students, parents, or anyone else. "I'll never tell someone they're terrible, but I reserve those few accolades for when they're ready for it." Now coming up to her thirtieth year on the faculty, Frank, sitting in an office with views of the Hudson River, reflected on some of the problems facing both teachers and students today

A former dancer and choreographer who performed with Martha Graham, in an expanded group for performances of Primitive Mysteries in 1964 and 1965, she then taught for about five years in Graham's studio. ("I was never intimidated by her.") Frank appeared with other companies, including Joyce Trisler's and the Juilliard Dance Theatre before giving up one flourishing career to concentrate on two others: raising a family and becoming one of the best dance educators in the country. In 1993 she received a Distinguished Teacher award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and in 1995 was voted Outstanding Teacher by the Performing Arts school's parents association.

Says Frank, "In certain ways I feel I'm in a time warp because I've stuck to the things I've been doing for a long time. But they work." They are things that pay off in shaping talent. Among the many who have come back to say "thank you" are Leonard Meek, now with Alvin Ailey, Jean Emile (Netherlands Dance Theater), Ruthlyn Soloman (White Oak Dance Project), Eddie Shellman (Dance Theatre of Harlem), Leona Stapleton, Gregg Burge, Jon Reisling, and Desmond Richardson (Complexions), all of whom came under her tutelage.

Every year up to 2,000 youngsters apply to the school, targeted in many impressionable young minds as the prototype for the movie and TV series Fame, though those entertainments bear little resemblance to the genuine article. Says Frank with a smile, "I was in the movie, but I can assure you that studying here is not like those shows. What goes on here is a wonderful training program for the right person. It's very serious, disciplined. Maybe students' parents might hesitate, but we're not afraid to say, `you may not do this, you may not wear that, you must stop talking, and if you don't like it, too bad, because we're not changing the rules.'"

The Performing Arts School is a magnet for a vast pool of potential talent in the city and surrounding boroughs. After several sessions of preliminary auditions, seeing children thirteen going on fourteen, some seventy are selected, although for various reasons only ten to fifteen percent of those actually end up in the school. Notes Frank, "It's all a bit of a gamble. The range of development is astonishing--some look eighteen, others, nine, and you realize that you're not going to see these children for almost a year. Incidentally, there was a time when we only had one boy in a graduating class. Now the interest is picking up. We had ten or twelve last year.

"For most kids," says Frank half-seriously, "the freshman year is spent trying to teach them how to take a dance class. By the middle of their sophomore year, they finally settle down and hone in on what the training really is. Eventually, they conform, even though it can take two or three years. Yet some of our most wonderful students are the ones who gave us the most trouble early on. We try to corral all their energy into dancing and not into fighting rules and regulations."

From the outset, Frank corrects any misunderstandings the children might have. "They come here maybe having been the best thing in their neighborhood--perhaps won some local dance competition--and all of a sudden they're in culture shock because they're not even among the best kids in their class. Some fall apart. It's hard-work, I try to explain. We're not teaching them dances, we're teaching them dancing. A question I'm always asked is, `When do we do the show?' and I tell them that we're not going to get up there and do a show every week."

According to Frank, the multitude of scholarships available these days can be a mixed blessing. "The bad thing is that these kids have come to expect a free ride and aren't motivated without one. I remember when I was teaching for Arthur Mitchell [Dance Theatre of Harlem], he insisted that every child pay, even if it was only a quarter, and he was absolutely right. When I ask my students what they're going to do during the sumer, they say what scholarship auditions they're going to take. If they don't get a scholarship, they don't go to class, even if they can pay. They don't go to performances half the time even though they can get free tickets. It's just a very strange mentality." On the other hand, she points out, "many work very hard--even overwork. They take two classes a day, and the older ones often take classes elsewhere at other studios in addition to doing their academic work. I emphasize that they must at least get their high school diploma because if they get hit by a bus, what happens?"

Another factor in teaching children these days, says Frank, is that they're pulled by so many different forces. She quotes an article in Newsweek saying that academic success or failure often depends on peer groups, and that by high school, the influence of a child's friends on his or her academic performance is greater than a parent's. "One on one you can have a perfectly articulate conversation," she says. "Together, they act stupid. `Dumbing down,' it's called. What do you do? Interfere with them socially? I have kids who could do brilliantly if they were in the right crowd."

Frank has clear-cut ideas about how and what she teaches. Her students must know dance vocabulary and music. As a dancer who found herself happily adjusted to both Graham and ballet techniques, she sees no intrinsic conflict in those disciplines. "I understood right away that they go so well together. I teach classic Graham technique because I believe it makes dancers, making the body a facile instrument. However, realistically, very few people are going to be dancing the Graham repertoire. So they've got to be able to make it a tool with the ballet technique for developing as dancers. To work centered is terribly important. The whole purpose of choreography is to distort what would be normal technique. To distort it you've got to be centered, so I insist, `take your ballet class.' I do a lot with combining techniques--though not with young children. I make sure they know their alphabet before they start making words, so to speak. And I'm not interested in kids who just want to do tricks that pass for dance. What is technique except a bunch of habits the body's learning? It shouldn't be distorted or worshipped as an end-all."

One of the things Frank tries to teach is quality "and that's hard to do without imposing your own taste. Maybe students aren't ready to understand when they're seventeen or eighteen, but they will in the next forty years. I'd like to see quality come back onto choreography, and not the kind of junk that passes for art so often--like on MTV. I'd like audiences to be more selective. Choreographers take their cues from audiences, who have taken their cues from the wrong places. It goes round and round."

In common with other educators, Frank worries about the prospects for even the most excellent students she turns out. "Dance is so oriented toward youth. I find that I'm referring more and more kids to go to college and to be realistic about what's out there for them." Saying that the state of the arts in this country is in crisis, she bemoans the dance drain, which, like the brain drain, has taken many Americans to jobs overseas, rarely to be seen again by audiences here. "It's been going on for fifteen years. On the other hand, it's left more time and space for regional companies to develop, and that's a good thing." Does it discourage students? "No, I don't think so," says Frank. "Nobody's going to be put off if they have to ask me, `Gee, should I be a dancer?' If they really want to, they'll do it."