Once upon a time there was a little girl from Lynwood who wanted to become a ballerina.
The little girl trained at a ballet school in Compton, then she trained in New York. She trained and trained and trained until she became so good that a major ballet company hired her. And she lived happily ever after--until she returned home to Los Angeles.
What she saw here would sour any dancer's storybook ending.
"I came back to L.A. and I couldn't believe we don't have a major world-class ballet company," said Robyn Gardenhire.
So Gardenhire, a former member of the renowned American Ballet Theatre, has launched an effort to develop a first-class Los Angeles-based ballet company and school. Armed with the same determination and love of dance that carried her from a school in Compton to a company with Mikhail Baryshnikov, she is hoping to give the city what others like New York, Boston and Cleveland have.
Last month her nonprofit City Ballet of Los Angeles opened a dance school in Pico-Union. It operates in the Salvation Army Red Shield Youth and Community Center at 11th and Union streets.
Gardenhire's dream is an old and familiar one within this city's classical dance community. That she is treading a path strewn with failed attempts--and that some better-known dance organizers have similar aspirations--does not trouble her or her supporters. Nor does the fact that she has virtually no money aside from private donations.
"We're small, but we're hoping to get very grand," said C. Alex Datcher, an actress who serves as City Ballet's executive director. "We're doing it slowly. We're building up people."
Through a partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, selected students will study with City Ballet in free classes as early as this fall. Teachers will include a former member of the Bolshoi Ballet, Gardenhire said.
The new school is a welcome boost to the district's effort to ensure an education in the art form, said Leah Bass-Baylis, the district's dance advisor.
"It's important that as a school district we develop meaningful partnerships with the dance entities in town that can offer quality instruction," Bass-Baylis said.
Since opening the school, Gardenhire, who is six months pregnant, has been hard at work, teaching young children in the predominantly Latino neighborhood to love ballet even before they can spell the word. And she has exposed the children to other professional groups they otherwise would not see.
