The comeback of Laguna Beach High - Laguna Beach High School, Laguna Beach, California, enjoying thriving dance program

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1998 by Caitlin Sims

If you were looking for a dynamic, expanding dance program, a public high school near the beach in Southern California would not be the most likely place to look. An even less obvious place to search would be a school district recently on the brink of bankruptcy in Orange County, well known for its conservative politics and its own bankruptcy. Yet Laguna Beach, a renowned artist community that is home to several arts festivals and myriad galleries, is not an ordinary town. Laguna Beach High School, whose students are nicknamed the "Artists," has a vibrant and developing dance program and a newly renovated theater.

I was a student in the dance department of LBHS some years ago, when the dance boom of the eighties had extended to the local level. Even then, Laguna was different. We swept the choreography and performance sections of a high school competition for several years running; eventually the sponsors turned it into a noncompetitive festival. In my three years with the resident dance company, we performed in Hawaii, were host to a modern dance company from New Zealand, and presented concerts of all-student choreography. Betty McCarthy was the enthusiastic director who demanded high levels of technique and sophisticated choreography from the students.

The department went through a series of teachers after McCarthy left in 1985, and the dance program lost momentum. By 1992 interest on the part of the student body was at a low--the program had dwindled to just one class, and the students no longer performed.

Mark Dressler took over the drama department in the early nineties and began to revitalize the performing arts. He helped bring in former Radio City Music Hall Rockette and LBHS graduate Lisa Kyne to run the dance program. Kyne and her mother, Pauline Kyne, have been teaching for more than fibeen years in Laguna and run a successful dance program through the city's recreation department. "We brought ballet, tap, jaz, and musical theater to the high school," says Lisa Kyne. "I had just retired from a stage career, so I brought people in to do workshops."

She immediately raised the dancers' visibility in the school by having them perform elaborate jaz numbers at the pep rallies. "It was our only way to get back in everyone's faces," says Sara Lepere, a student and dancer at LBHS in the mid-nineties who is now auditioning on Broadway.

"The program is really a function of the staffing," says parent and volunteer Angela Irish. Even in arts-oriented Laguna, the budget for the performing arts departments was tight. The Kynes, however, were dedicated as well as experienced. "The school has this beautiful studio, with hardwood floors and a view of the ocean, but they had been using half of it as storage," explains Lisa Kyne. "My husband and I got rid of all of the junk--there was stuff from the sixties--and painted and fixed it up. All this we did with our own money, because there was no other money. As for putting on the shows and paying for the guest instructors, I basically did it the same way I do with my private program--by funding a lot of it myself, or getting the students to pay individually. Very little of it, in fact I can easily say none of it, was funded by the school at the time."

Like the Kynes, the community's support of the school's arts program was unwavering. In 1994, when the school's 450-seat theater, which was built in 1929 and badly needed renovation, an organization of local parents called FOOT (Friends of Our Theater) helped raise $ 1,000,000 for the job. New seats were installed, the orchestra pit filled in, the stage extended, and the backstage area modernized.

Under the Kynes' guidance, the dance program expanded quickly. "It helped that my mom and I have an academy, so a lot of kids were already studying with us and going to Laguna Beach High School. Once we made the move into the school, the others decided to take dance, too."

In 1995 the school district found itself on the brink of bankruptcy and the performing arts classes were at risk. "They were cutting everything, including almost every elective," says Lepere, who attended school board meetings as a student representative. "It was really scary. They were even talking about cutting down how often trash was to be taken out."

The dance department was on the list of expendable electives. "All summer we were just waiting to find out if we were going to be cut," says Kyne. "We went and got signatures from parents saying that they would do what they could to support it. We had at least 500 signatures. "

Again the community stepped in to help. "It clobbered the arts," says LBHS parent and FOOT leader Jon Jenett of the near-bankruptcy. "It was then that FOOT shifted its focus from raising money solely for the capital campaign for the renovation to raising money to maintain the departments. We've raised $30,000 to $40,000 per year."

The Kynes decided to focus on their academy, and in 1996, Tod Kubo, who had been choreographing the school's musicals, was hired as the dance teacher. His youthful energy and style built the program back up.