When movement spells success: an L.A. elementary school uses dance to sharpen minds.

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At a tiny charter school in one of Los Angeles' poorest neighborhoods, students learn the alphabet by shaping letters with their bodies. They study other cultures through folk dance. They're taught multiplication with tap.

Movement is the medium here at Gabriella Charter School (GCS), California's only dance-themed elementary school. School leaders, convinced that dance is a powerful academic tool, have integrated movement into the curriculum to help students latch on to difficult concepts. And they've made studio work a daily activity because, they say, it makes kids better learners. Their goal is not to turn out great dancers so much as great students.

"We try to appeal to multiple intelligences," says Susan Gurman, who has been the principal of the school since it opened in 2005. By using movement--not just language--to communicate ideas, teachers engage students holistically. When first-graders use their legs and arms like clock hands to represent the 12 hours on the dial, "they're seeing it, hearing it, and feeling it," Gurman says. "They're active learners."

Gurman has the numbers to back up her claims. The school's 152 students excel on standardized tests and routinely surpass state targets, especially in math, making GCS one of the city's top performing elementary schools.

It's an impressive feat, especially considering that the school serves a typically underperforming demographic. More than 90 percent of GCS students qualify for the federal Free/Reduced Meals Program, and two thirds are not native English speakers. Almost all are children of immigrants--mostly from Central America and South Korea--and many live near the school, located in the struggling Rampart area, just west of downtown L.A.

Tucked on the leafy grounds of what was once an historic hotel, GCS feels like a sanctuary. Outside its wrought iron gates, the homeless sleep on the streets and gang violence is common. Inside, in a big studio (the hotel's old dining room), students in navy and white or gray uniforms line up at the barre.

Students take one choreography and two ballet classes a week. The remaining two days, they study either tap, modern, jazz, or ballroom, depending on their grade. All of their teachers have danced professionally.

Most students are enrolled because their families heard that the school was strong academically, not because they had a special interest in dance. Because of this, it can take months to acclimate kids to "dance culture," Gurman says. That includes teaching them that "dance class isn't recess."

Liza Bercovici, founder of the school, is convinced that the discipline learned in dance translates to the classroom. "Having an intensive focus on arts is not something that negates your ability to succeed in the core subjects," Bercovici says. "Being immersed in a single art form will stimulate them in all sorts of ways, with focus, self-image, self-confidence, and teamwork."

In class, teachers point out the connections between dance and other disciplines. For instance, they often compare dance with writing. In choreography and the writing process, students draft, edit, and "publish" their work.

Meanwhile, the movement woven into the curriculum helps students stay engaged. Third-grade science students get excited when asked to mimic with their bodies a parcel of air that is warming up or cooling down, teachers say. This kind of teaching benefits fidgety students in particular, or those who suffer from ADHD.

The teachers and administrators at GCS say dance has a transformative effect. Gurman tells the story of a fifth-grader who entered the school with behavioral problems and low self-esteem. He excelled in dance class and now proudly bears a nickname, King of the Foxtrot. "All the girls want to dance with him," Gurman says. "It was a real turning point for how he saw himself."

Teachers encourage the best dance students to take after-school classes with Everybody Dance!, a program that provides instruction to more than 1,000 underserved children at three studios in the Rampart area. The two newest, which opened in November, were built with $1.5 million in funds raised by Pueblo Nuevo Development and The Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation, which Bercovici created to honor her daughter Gabriella, who died in 1999 at age 13.

In 2000, Bercovici and the Foundation launched Everybody Dance! Gabriella had been an avid dancer and Bercovici wanted to keep her spirit alive. "She just found a lot of peace with it," Bercovici says of her daughter. "I saw how much dance did for her, and I wanted to replicate that for other kids."

Most of the students at Everybody Dance! are children who otherwise could not have afforded dance classes. Some have matriculated to prestigious schools like Juilliard and the School of the Hamburg Ballet.

The program was so successful that Bercovici decided to try to adapt it for academic ends. Four years later, she is heartened by the high test scores of the students at GCS. But she also measures success in a different way. "A lot of these kids have been with us since they were 4 or 5 years old," she says. "They're becoming great dancers, but I'm also watching them become great people."

Kate Linthicum writes for the Los Angeles Times.