Their Best Feet Forward : Saint Joseph Ballet Program Gives Teens a Positive Outlet

There are any number of ways to try to reach youngsters considered at risk for gang membership: in school, on the baseball field, at the swimming pool. There is also one program in Orange County that tries to help teenagers through ballet.

The Saint Joseph Ballet is the creation of Beth Burns, who founded it 13 years ago when she was a nun in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. The Roman Catholic religious order thought enough of Burns’ efforts that it allowed her to work full-time on the project.

In a good example of doing it yourself, Burns learned how to apply for grants and raise funds. From a five-week, $4,000 program for two dozen Santa Ana children, the ballet has grown to a entity with a budget of more than $300,000 a year. About half that money comes from individual donations. The rest comes from foundations and corporations.

The money would appear to be well spent.

A study of 113 students in Saint Joseph’s 1993 class showed the dancers had an overall grade-point average of 3.0 and a sense of achievement that has helped these particular youngsters prevail in a troubled environment.

The need for a program like the ballet in that setting is clear. One 14-year-old picked up a newspaper before class a few months ago and found a front-page story about a 17-year-old friend who had been shot by police, who said the boy was a gang member. The dead youth’s sister also once danced with the ballet.

A teenage boy in the ballet lives on Minnie Street, one of Santa Ana’s toughest neighborhoods. He said gunfire broke out almost nightly before police recently opened a substation on the street; now it is heard about once a week.

Other dancers told of the pressures to join gangs and of the difficulties speaking with their parents and other grown-ups. They said it often seems as if the gangs are their only friends, their distractions from tough times.

Burns, who left the religious order in 1989, said the ballet has lost some children too, boys and girls who quit after a while, some who started running with gangs again. But the successes have been sweet: students with college dance scholarships or professional careers. More than 1,500 children have been trained in year-round classes, most of them on full scholarships. More than 25,000 others in the county have taken part in special workshops and outreach programs.

It’s a worthwhile effort to keep teens off the streets and out of gangs.