The music bounces off the walls at the Dance Alloy studios from the moment you open the front door.

As you stand in the entrance hallway, the rhythmic drumbeats of the "Slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack act like a lure into the main studio. Inside the room, jazz instructor Michelle van Doeren urges 30 young dancers to tap their inner Indian spirit to the throbbing strains of "Jai ho!"

The dancers, who number 60 in all and range in age from 12 to 23, were in the midst of a two-week summer session called the Jones Intensive. The program, which ended Aug. 23, is run by Greer Reed-Jones, newly appointed artistic director at the Alloy.

"Over 130 auditioned this year," says Leslie Anderson-Braswell, Reed-Jones' assistant and "right-hand lady."

Anderson-Braswell is something of a local dance icon herself, getting her start with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, followed by a career at Stuttgart Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem. She returned home to perform with the Pittsburgh Black Theatre Dance Ensemble and teach at Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

"I think I've taught everyone on the staff!" she exclaims.

The students arrive for a 9 a.m. class and aren't finished until 4:30 p.m. But now it's time to break for lunch, provided by Oliver Catering, whose macaroni and cheese and turkey lunches have received rave reviews.

"They get a hot lunch five days a week," says Anderson-Braswell. "The meals are nutritionally based, supplemented by water and juice -- all the good things."

That's so they can weather an "intensive" series of classes that are founded on an everyday cocktail of ballet and modern dance supplemented by African, jazz, nutrition, acting and hip-hop. It all culminates in a Sunday performance at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater.

The high-powered staff includes Crystal Frazier of Rennie Harris Puremovement in Philadelphia, Cleveland's Terence Greene, Point Park University's Jason McDole, former LABCO dancer Gretchen Moore, African dance experts Mia Jennings and Desiree Davis, hip-hop dancer Crystal Frazier, van Doeren, Reed-Jones and Anderson-Braswell.

"I think it's so vital and so important that the kids get quality training," Reed-Jones says as she joins the conversation. "But some may not be able to afford programs that offer all that we do.

"This new generation of dancers has to be well-rounded, and their technical prowess has to be stellar -- I'm just trying to prepare them."

So she created a program that provides scholarships to all who are selected, with support from Highmark, the Multicultural Arts Initiative, Pittsburgh Foundation and a few anonymous donors to cover the $800 fee for two weeks. It's a bargain by any workshop standards.

"I knew that the kids would be interested in what I was offering and the artists that would be associated with it," Reed-Jones says. "But the intensive turned out even better than I expected."

The students seem to agree.

"I can't see myself doing anything else as long as I can dance," says Carnegie Mellon University senior Raymond Ejiofox, who coordinates a major in decision science with a budding dance career. He has become an expert at time management as well.

Slippery Rock University student Alicia Garrity, 20, loved working on Greene's piece, "Pulse." Caitlyn Dye, 19, enjoyed the hip-hop class, something she normally doesn't encounter in her dance studies at Slippery Rock.

Some already were best friends before they came. Jazmine Bailey, Hailey Javier, Hannah Javier and Paige Gilson, all 17-year-old students at CAPA, rehearse an African routine during lunch.

"I worked a whole different set of muscles -- and they hurt," Gilson congenially admits.

When they begin rehearsing the routine with Jennings, Bailey can't stop smiling. Later she says, "In African dance, you let it all out because it's a celebration. I think of something happy and it brings a smile to my face."

It's easy to hear this group through the floorboards of the studio upstairs. After all, they're doing a call and response with Jennings and a battery of live African drums is playing. But the upstairs group doesn't break its concentration as Reed-Jones conducts a Horton modern dance class with its own percussionist, Charles Hall.

Then it's on to repertory class, where the students learn a new work. In this case, Level I is cleaning up Greene's "Pulse," while Level II moves on to selections from "Hair" under van Doeren.

The following Sunday afternoon, the two pieces are part of the intensive's high-powered program at the Kelly-Strayhorn in East Liberty, where an overflow audience of friends and family raises the roof in appreciation of the students' efforts.

The performance also includes Greene's "Empathy," a pair of African dances and a hip-hop routine and a Michael Jackson tribute by Frazier. McDole enlarged and reconfigured Robert Battle's "The Hunt," a piece that was done by Point Park University's Conservatory Dance Company last year.

Spoken word artist Vanessa German pays tribute to the dancers and so do the choreographers in a film that was made to connect the dance. In McDole's segment, he has a statement for the dancers: "It's not the dance that makes the dancer; it's the person that makes the dance."

The students have listened well and reluctantly adjourn to a reception, adorned with many hugs and kisses for newfound friends, with the hope and promise of "see ya next year!"

First Published: August 31, 2009, 8:00 a.m.