Performing with the pros: young dancers gain professional experience with national companies.

Nervous excitement smelled like hairspray in the children's dressing room of the Kennedy Center Opera House, where two dozen girls waited for their call to places. After their costumes were buttoned and zipped, and lipstick applied, all these budding ballerinas could do was lacquer up their hair. Two chaperoning morns asked them to can it on the hairspray. The fumes were getting toxic.

Twenty-four girls open and close Balanchine's 1962 A Midsummer Night's Dream, which New York City Ballet performed this March during its annual engagement in Washington, D.C. Rather than bring young dancers down from New York, NYCB auditioned girls locally. This was a priceless opportunity for students to taste the demands required to make it in the ballet world. Pink-hued fantasies about ballet's beauty and grace were quickly dispelled by the long hours, hard work, and incessant repetition that a professional performance demands.

This season almost a hundred 6- to 15-year-olds tried out for NYCB children's ballet mistress Garielle Whittle. She needed 24, plus another 6 understudies, for Dream--all under 5'--to play bugs in the forest scenes. "It's hard, fast, and a lot of dancing," Whittle noted, during a break in the nearly three-hour audition. "The girls are a real corps de ballet."

As a student at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia in 1914, a 10-year-old Georgi Balanchivadze made his stage debut in The Sleeping Beauty, continuing ballet's long-held tradition of giving youngsters stage experience as soon as they're ready. As a ballet master, Balanchine loved using children and often created special sections of ballets that featured young dancers.

Yet today, opportunities to dance with a major-league company are rare. Not many children, other than those selected from the School of American Ballet to dance in New York, get to perform with the New York City Ballet. Other touring companies such as the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre also sometimes need pint-sized dancers to fill specific roles.

Whittle's final cast represented a half-dozen ballet schools from throughout the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. The girls chosen attended rehearsals for 70 hours over 17 straight days prior to opening night. They learned new steps and new ways of dancing.

"They came back recharged, motivated, and inspired," says Francoise Thouveny-Doyle, faculty member at the Washington School of Ballet, who often sees her students dance with companies that visit D.C. on tour. "Sometimes the girls wonder why they work so hard at the barre doing so many repetitions of exercises," she adds. "Then they see professional dancers doing the same thing at the barre. It's a proof that that's how they get there."

For Rebecca Mattern, 11, of Virginia's Reston Conservatory Ballet, there was, of course, the "coolness factor" of dancing at the Kennedy Center. Plus she says, "It was a good experience to have a different teacher. I really needed to work hard and now I'm going to try to think about my upper body and arms much more."

The Maryland Youth Ballet in Silver Spring, MD, was represented by 14 children in the cast. Michelle Lees, associate artistic director, says, "I think it's so valuable for the students because they get to see professional dancers preparing and realize that it's not all sweetness and light. They'll see huge scenery, hear live music, and deal with professional lights, a huge stage, many thousands of people."

Alexandra Farber, a 14-year-old MYB dancer who typically had math homework to complete when she wasn't rehearsing, observed the professional dancers at dress rehearsal. "They definitely have a lot more drive in their dancing," she says. "And even if the steps aren't right, they put feeling in their dancing."

Whittle has seen a generation or two of girls mature into professional dancers through her work at SAB and serving as children's ballet mistress for NYCB. And while outside of New York a diversely trained cast poses challenges, it has its rewards too. "They gain an enormous amount of self-discipline," she notes.

"They have to really come to rehearsal, buckle down, work every day, all the time--not just halfway through the rehearsal and then give up and relax. It's very intense."

"I see a lot of kids become more focused," Whittle continues. "A certain maturity happens. I've seen really shy kids blossom after being onstage. Knowing that they can get out there and do that is a great self-esteem booster."

Lisa Traiger, who writes on the performing arts from Maryland, was the proud mother of an 11-year-old bug during this run of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

AUDITIONING TIPS FOR CHILDREN

* Garielle Whittle of NYCB advises: "Go in with a positive attitude and do your best."

* Dress impeccably. Wear a flattering leotard and clean tights with hair pulled back into a classic ballet bun. Michelle Lees of MYB says, "They have to be immaculate: hair, tights, shoes."

* Listen and pay attention to details. Lees expects her students to be on their best behavior, not whispering in the background or being disrespectful.

* Follow directions. Washington School of Ballet's Francoise Thouveny-Doyle tells students, "Auditioners look for dancers who can do exactly what it is they want."

* "Do not cry" if not selected, warns Julia Redick of Reston Conservatory Ballet. Whittle, who gently rejects many girls each year, adds, "It's not anything to take personally. Sometimes we're looking for a certain height or type. "

* Honor your commitment, "whether you're cast as an understudy or a boy," says Rhodie Jorgenson, Joffrey's children's ballet mistress when in D.C. "We get very upset with any child who is taken and then backs out. I see this as life training. They're representing a studio and they're representing themselves. You want to put yourself in a good light."--L.T.