Dance Moves

Cheerleader tryouts for the Baltimore Ravens kicked off today as more than 200 hopefuls turned out in a bid to join the squad. Newcomers and veterans alike will be fighting for team's 60 cheerleading positions at the Merritt Downtown Athletic Club this weekend. It's the first step in a month-long audition process that will culminate in an "American Idol"-like stage show at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel on March 26. Today is all about initial impressions with most of the cuts happening tomorrow, says Heather Blocher, the Ravens' advertising and marketing coordinator.

If you had told me I would be a member of the Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Inc., I would have looked at you like you were crazy. Iota Phi who? Never heard of them. Growing up, the only fraternity I saw on television was Omega Psi Phi. But even as a freshman at Coppin State University, I knew I wanted to pledge a fraternity and join a brotherhood that had a lot of social benefits. At first, I wanted to find a frat that had my favorite colors - blue and red. And just my luck, there were two fraternities with those colors.

Step Up 2 the Streets scores some serious points for its dance moves but does a lousy job of remembering there's a lot more to this big old world than moving your feet. A sequel to 2006's surprise shot-in-Baltimore hit Step Up, it posits a world (set and filmed again in Charm City) where the only thing of any importance is winning the local underground dance competition - in this case, an on-the-sly showdown between warring crews dubbed The Streets. Step Up 2 the Streets (Walt Disney Studios)

The Loyola men's lacrosse team senses a long-awaited breakthrough is coming, as it angles for a trip to the NCAA tournament after a five-year absence. And the Greyhounds figure one of the players leading the charge will be a guy known as much for his long hair, carefree image and passion for older rock and pop music as he is for his hard-nosed, no-nonsense approach on the field. Senior attackman Dan Bauers is the whole, curious package. As Loyola's offensive leader with 15 goals, Bauers carries himself with the tough, bulldogging ways that echo his days as a defensive football and hockey player at Oakton (Va.)

It's a few days after the Baltimore All-Stars Marching Unit bested a handful of local rivals at an annual battle-of-the-bands competition, and the zealous bunch is now having to face a champion's burden. Everybody, as the band's leaders are finding out, wants to be part of a winner. The group's weekly Tuesday practice at a recreation center on Greenmount Avenue in East Baltimore is overcrowded, filled wall-to-wall with faces who want in. Walik Hernandez, one of the band's 12 founders and a drum major, says the last performance, where the dancers dressed in black cat suits in keeping with a Halloween theme, was a production that sent the band's Q rating into the stratosphere.

Arms are curving up toward the sky; limber bodies are bouncing, charged. As the pumping music races, the dance moves are by turn angular and choppy, then elegant and wispy. Anupama Prasad, a Johns Hopkins University student and one of the organizers of this dance rehearsal, is smiling in the front, mouthing the words to the songs. As the music slips seamlessly from Sean Paul's "We Be Burnin'" to "Akhiyan Na Maar" from the Indian film Ek Khiladi Ek Hassena, she quietly breathes out a mixture of Hindi and English words.

Eva Anderson watches her own image appear on the television monitor in the kitchen of her Columbia home - the powerful energy of the dance caught in her figure straining under a taut cloth, like a swan snared in a net. "I like cloth," she says. "I like Spandex especially because it can do things. It can dance almost by itself, if you manipulate it right." Anderson is previewing the documentary Chronicles of a Dancer: How We Became Artists, a video retrospective of the 32 seasons of the Eva Anderson Dancers, which will premiere today at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Anderson, who has always been a creative, inventive choreographer, has been a wizard at keeping a professional dance company afloat for three decades in Maryland.

They're cute, friendly and very pink. They know how to make a scene, swivel their hips and then disappear quickly. For the 15 members of Pink Bloque, a group of twentysomethings based in Chicago who protest by dancing in the streets, pink is the color of feminism and political activism. And dance is the ultimate weapon. On Tuesday night, the group brought its punchy outfits and big smiles to a four-hour workshop at the Patterson, a restored movie theater in Highlandtown, with the Creative Alliance serving as host.

In the brightly lit Atlantic Ballroom in Towson, Igor and Polina Pilipenchuk practice their dance moves. They glide gracefully across polished hardwood, shoes tapping and hips swiveling. In June, the Towson residents are going to Tokyo to represent the United States in the World Professional Ten Dance Championships. Last month, the Belarus natives won the National Dancesport Title in Asheville, N.C., establishing themselves as the top ballroom-dancing couple in the United States. In June, they could very well be named the world's best.

Let's get the ground rules established right away. Contact is a musical in which there is no singing. It hardly has any dialogue. And while we're at it, you should know that this Broadway show relies on taped music rather than a live band. Does all that sound like a turnoff? Well, guess what, Contact is a clever and classy show whose almost nonstop dancing makes it a must-see at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre. It's easy to see why it won four Tony Awards in 2000, including best musical.