Ballroom Dancing

WHAT HAS 18 legs, more sequins than Liberace's closet and a combined age of more than 630? The answer is the Golden Girls and Company, a local tap dancing troupe of six women and three men, all older than 70. The dancers put on a show at Florence Bain Senior Center last week in celebration of National Tap Dance Day. Jackie Dunphy is the group's founder. "I put a little group together to get started and then we got offers to do some shows. Now we're headed for the big time," Dunphy said.

Jane S. Salter, a homemaker who enjoyed ballroom dancing, died of cancer Oct. 28 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Stoneleigh resident was 78. Born in Manchester, Tenn., she earned a teaching certificate from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She taught in elementary schools in Mississippi and Tennessee before moving to Washington and becoming an FBI secretary. In Washington, she met Justin Salter. They married in 1953 and moved to Baltimore, where she taught briefly in the city school system.

Did you make up your mind that 1991 would be the year that you do something just for yourself?Maybe you decided to take a computer course or a flower-arranging course. Well, we are very excited about the large selection of adult education courses North County High is offering this year.North County High is the school most Brooklyn Park students attend, so we know many parents would benefit from this information.Some of the classes being offered include: watercolors, ballroom dancing, basic sewing, bookkeeping and accounting, keyboarding, computer education and parent effectiveness training.

Chris Mayne is almost as surprised as his partner, Sarah Jones, at how smoothly they're moving with this ballroom dancing thing. Mayne, 17, is the giddy one as he extends his arm while Jones, 15, firmly grasps his hand and as gracefully as possible spins away from him. "We're good," Mayne, a senior, announced over the music, chatter and laughter filling the cafeteria at Winters Mill High in Westminster. "I'm so proud of myself," Jones, a junior, said as Mayne reeled her back in. It appears the two were born for swing dancing.

The girl stormed off the dance floor, her body language the universal for "I'm outta here." Her partner was left standing alone, his shoulders shrugging in the universal for "What did I do?" Ah, the drama, the intrigue, the stomped toes. It's one of those ideas that seem like either pure genius or total insanity, and turn out to be a good bit of both: Take the mannered world of ballroom dancing, plant it in the hormonally fraught setting of the typical middle school. Moviegoers first saw the results of this odd coupling several years ago, in the hit documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, which followed several New York City schools as they fielded ballroom dancing teams to compete for the top prize.

We asked Sun readers for stories about their vacations in Ocean City. This is what they told us: The frustrated teen-ager and the formidable chaperone "Spring break in Ocean City during 1971 was not what I expected. The weather was perfect, skies were blue, but I was saddled with my 75-year-old grandmother, who was sent to chaperone me. "Since my grandmother was from Greece, she did not understand what a teen-age girl in Ocean City needs: boys, beach and boardwalk. I had spent numerous hours trying on bikinis, hot pants and micro-minis in order to get noticed on the boardwalk and the beach, but Yia Yia Paulina frightened all the potential male suitors away.

Dim lights, music, a basket of mints and numbers pinned on the backs of competitors marked Patapsco Middle School's fifth annual dance contest. But instead of boogying to their latest favorites on a Friday or Saturday night, eighth-graders competed in the foxtrot, waltz, swing and polka, culminating their physical education unit on ballroom dancing. "They want to know - what does dance have to do with PE?" said Fred Talentino, physical education teacher at the Ellicott City school who laid out contest ground rules.

To my DIY brides/grooms, have I got a find for you. I was poking around online yesterday, looking for a place nearby where I could take a class on reuphosltery (because I am approximately 25 years older than I appear and love to collect domestic hobbies.) A few clicks in, I hit the jackpot: an inexpensive class not too far away that starts in two weeks. Squee! But oh, what's this? They offer cake decorating class? French? Zumba? Let me introduce you to CEED at CCBC. It all stands for Continuing Education and Economic Development at The Community College of Baltimore County.

If we would just loosen the residency requirement a little, Tony Williams could be mayor of both Deecee and Bawlamer at the same time.Using the surplus to pay off the debt is so obvious Congress will never do it.Investing Social Security funds in the stock market is a neat idea as long as the market goes up.First ballroom dancing. Now bribery is an Olympic sport.Pub Date: 1/22/99

It starts with a prompt from the ballroom dancing instructor, and the kids, arm in arm and elbows up, miraculously transform into elegant fox-trotters. The middle school students at Crossroads School are part of a program based on Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about dancing teams at New York City schools. The school in Fells Point takes kids from impoverished neighborhoods in East Baltimore and helps turn their academic performances around.