Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech Program Is Expanding One recent afternoon at the dance school Ballet Tech, the choreographer Eliot Feld watched as Joyce Ha, an angelic young student, rehearsed a solo from his exuberant and charming "Meshugana Dance." Over its raucous klezmer music, he shouted: "I can't count your teeth! How many are there? In that instant, Ms. Ha's shoulders softened as she grinned back. Her hops became more buoyant, her feet more jaunty. You could see her for the lovely, lyrical dancer that she will become - or already is, at the ripe age of 12. Every year, roughly 30,000 students like Ms. Ha audition for Ballet Tech, formally known as the New York City Public School for Dance, which provides dance training run by Mr. Feld along with academic study for 156 students in grades 4 through 8. Beginning on Thursday, Kids Dance, Ballet Tech's performing arm, will return to the Joyce Theater for a program featuring "Meshugana Dance," as well as Mr. Feld's new "Upside Dance." Opening night will also include guest artists, like Tiler Peck of New York City Ballet and Kaitlyn Gilliland, a former member of the troupe. Performances run through Sunday. But the main focus of Ballet Tech is the students, including Ms. Ha, who has studied at the school for two and a half years. "This little girl, Joyce, she adores to dance," Mr. Feld said later in an interview. She eats up space. "How do you get her to reveal her joy in the dancing?" he continued. "I can't say, "Smile." But if she's relaxed, she'll breathe better and then she'll have more energy. You try to trick her into it. The show comes at a promising time for Ballet Tech. Beginning in the fall of 2014, the organization will team up with the Professional Performing Arts High School, allowing the students to continue studying both dance and academic subjects through 12th grade. "I'll only be 72," the spry Mr. Feld said dryly. Christine Sarry, Ballet Tech's director of faculty and a former Feld dancer and principal with American Ballet Theater, is thrilled by the collaboration. "At the end of the eighth grade, I'd see where we had taken them, and then I was losing them to La Guardia or other schools," she said, referring to the performing arts high school near Lincoln Center. And I'm thinking, no, no, no - this is just when it starts to really blossom. "It takes a good eight, nine years to develop a dancer," Ms. Sarry added. "And the children would come back and say "We miss Ballet Tech." " Under the new arrangement, students who otherwise would have aged out of the program will split their day between the schools, taking academic classes at the high school and returning to Ballet Tech for dance. While Mr. Feld does not consider the setup ideal - he would love for students to be able to do all their work at his school - he said that it's good enough for now, while the program is small. To find enough dancers to fill a high school class, Ballet Tech would need to audition 70,000 to 80,000 children a year. But only about 200 primary schools allow Ballet Tech to come in and hold auditions. "To have 25 or 30 kids in the ninth grade, you need to have 200 in the fourth grade," he said. Unless we can get into all the schools, we'd have to compromise the quality of the student body, which we're not anxious to do. Mr. Feld, who was born in Brooklyn, had an illustrious career as a dancer himself. At 11, the same age as many of his young students, he performed the Nutcracker prince in Balanchine's original production of "The Nutcracker." Five years later, he was cast in "West Side Story" and played Baby-John in the movie version before finding his passion as a choreographer. He was riding the subway in 1977 when he first had the idea to look for dancers in public schools. "There were these kids on a field trip, and they were just thrilled to be going somewhere new, somewhere mysterious, somewhere else," he recalled. "I went, "Oh my God - there's the student body for a school." " The endeavor is about spotting talent and nurturing it. But make no mistake: it also gets children, like Pape Lam, 11, from Queens, out of potentially risky situations in other schools. "If I didn't come to the school, I don't know what I would do," Pape said. My mom wanted me to get out of my school. At first, Ballet Tech was mainly a feeding ground for Mr. Feld's own company, which disbanded in 2003. Students from the school have joined troupes like Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and a few have gone on to train at the School of American Ballet, which is affiliated with the New York City Ballet. One of them, Spartak Hoxha, went to become a full-fledged member of City Ballet. For Mr. Feld, the aim is to produce dancers. He doesn't particularly care where they end up. "I want them to study the way one should study, and what they do with it is not my concern," he said. I care about the quality of the student and why they're here and how they use the time here and if they become dancers that's great, and if they don't because they don't want to, they should not. The best service he can provide, Mr. Feld said, is to be rigorous. "Ballet is not for a class of people," he said. It's for everybody with talent. Ballet Tech performs Thursday through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800, joyce.org.