Secrets of a temple dancer: fifteen-year-old Erica Pereira learns La Bayadere's leading role from ballerina Amanda McKerrow (Young Dancer).

It's a rainy day on New York's Upper East Side. Outside, the traffic streaks honking by, but inside Ballet Academy East, dancers are hard at work. Dance bags pile in a heap under the piano, and familiar Minkus music fills the studio. Students eye their reflections in the mirrored walls as they spin across the floor.

Standing in the center of a studio, Erica Pereira, 15, watches closely as ballerina Amanda McKerrow demonstrates several steps. Pereira and her classmates are learning La Bayadere's Act II, "Kingdom of the Shades," from McKerrow, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and her husband, John Gardner, a former ABT soloist and full-time teacher at the academy.

While not affiliated with any professional company, the academy attracts serious students like Pereira, and distinguished teachers like Gardner, Cheryl Yeager, Johan Renvall, Peter Frame, and Francis Patrelle. Pereira, a tenth-grader who has been cast as Nikiya, a temple dancer in love with the handsome warrior Solar, commutes six days a week from her Long Island home for ballet class. She and other academy dancers will perform the Bayadere excerpt in a studio recital in a few weeks.

Nikiya has been a signature role for McKerrow, one in which she has been acclaimed for her classicism, purity and pathos. Her coaches for the part included Natalia Makarova, who in 1980 staged the full-length version of the ballet for ABT, giving American audiences their first chancre to see it. For a student like Pereira to have a chance to learn the role from a dancer of McKerrow's caliber is a rare opportunity, one coveted by dancers in training.

At the beginning of rehearsal, McKerrow takes a white practice tutu embroidered with gold lace from her dance bag and holds it out to Pereira. She slips it on and McKerrow fits it to her tiny waist with a safety pin. "It smells like dry ice," Pereira says. Perhaps that's because McKerrow has worn it in studio and stage rehearsals all over the world for the last nine years, ever since Gardner had it made for her.

Next, Pereira marks through the steps as McKerrow watches her closely. Pereira's excitement shows in her intense concentration. She has narrow hips, long legs, and seems completely tearless in her movements, almost as if she were unaware that what she is doing is considered difficult. "Amanda keeps telling me to do everything bigger, but keep nice and calm on top," she says.

Last spring, Pereira saw Alina Cojocaru and Angel Corella dance the ballet with ABT at Lincoln Center. "I loved the way Cojocaru pulled out every movement," Pereira marvels. "She never let it stop, or made it jerky. Nothing was angular. Everything was very round and calm."

In "The Kingdom of the Shades," Nikiya and Solar hold opposite ends of a long white piece of gauze at the beginning of the pas de deux. This gives the illusion that Nikiva is being partnered by Solar from a distance. Pereira finds she enjoys partnering work. "When we dance with the scarf, it's challenging because we have to time our movements together," says Pereira of rehearsing with partner Truett Thurow. Despite the illusion of connection the scarf creates, Pereira is performing the arabesque and en dedans turns by herself. When the couple comes together, McKerrow and Gardner step in to smooth out the awkward moments. "Erica, keep your elbows relaxed so that it's easier for him to manipulate you," McKerrow offers.

Ballet Academy East opened its doors in 1979. At first, there was only one small studio in a brownstone. Today, the academy, in much larger quarters, has five studios and programs that range from beginning to advanced level ballet, plus tap and modern classes. "We are so fortunate to be in New York City and be able to recruit dancers from ABT and New York City Ballet to work with our students," says Darla Hoover, the academy's artistic advisor and the coordinator of its ballet syllabus.

Not all young dancers get the opportunity to learn ballets like La Bayadere; but those who do gain confidence, believes Hoover. It also helps them understand the demands of learning a role. "A ballet like Bayadere is sacred," says McKerrow. "I want the students to feel lucky they are getting to do it. On the first day, you want to tell them everything you have learned in the past twenty years. But a student can only absorb so much at one time."

McKerrow learned the role of Nikiya from Makrova herselt. "Natasha was really adamant about being passionate," says McKerrow. "Nikiya's is a leashed passion that seethes under the surface and only explodes here and there." During rehearsal even McKerrow, who has danced many roles in Bayadere over her twenty-two years at ABT, finds that she still learns. "I find I have to remind myself, too, of the litttle corrections that I hear John saying to the kids," she says.

Both McKerrow and Gardner often find themselves forgetting that the students still have much of high school ahead of them, though when they teach, they always try to make their corrections gently and clearly. "I really believe in treating students like fellow artists. It doesn't mean they are as experienced, but they are artists," says Gardner.

Ballet is a word-of-mouth tradition; it cannot be learned from a book. Pereira is learning Bayadere from McKerrow, McKerrow learned it front Makarova, and the line continues back flora ballerina to ballerina through to Marius Petipa, who created the ballet in 1887. Who knows? Maybe twenty-five years from now, Erica Pereira may be teaching La Bayadere to a whole now generation of aspiring dancers.