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BALLROOM UNDER THE SKY

Midsummer Night Swing: First there's a 45-minute lesson, then, as the sun slowly goes down over the plaza, two hours of unfettered outdoor dancing to the vivacious sounds of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. "Make yourself sassy," the instructor calls, as a marvelously motley crowd rehearses the basics of the lindy hop. "There's a difference between wonderbread and groovin'." Bodies hunker into lowdown mode. Feet swivel in and out without impeding the jaunty backstep, step, step, backstep, kick, kick.

The dancing crowd is a cross-section of the city's citizenry. Ethnically and socially, it's all over the map. The seven ages of humankind are well accounted for and looking good: a toddler swung in a dancing dad's embrace; little girls luminous with their fantasies; scruffy, uncertain adolescent boys destined to mature into heroes; exotically gorgeous twentysomethings; happily bourgeois middle-aged twosomes; elders refusing to let the years quell their response to rhythm.

"Time to get close." Swirls and twirls get added on, partners dipping under each others' arms. "Hug her in, guys, then set her free--but not so free you can't summon her back with a little tug on her hand." The teaching done, the orchestra moves into full gear. Now the seasoned veterans of many another ballroom let their imaginations soar, inventing personal variations of elements like the dip, in which the gal swoops from vertical to diagonal in one swift move, her guy ensuring that she's safely suspended halfway between heaven and earth. Beginners, both the shy and the eager, stolidly trace the lindy's primary maneuvers with their feet, while, above the waist, their bodies begin to curve and twine. The dance floor throbs with the double beat of steps and music. Just about everyone in sight looks guilelessly happy.

Surely this dancing is a metaphor for a good life: an endless stream of giving and taking; grace in spontaneity; instinctively anticipating a partner's footfalls and handholds and responding to them in kind, now and then embellishing the basics with snazzy flourishes; maintaining the beat, no matter what; adorning the action with a smile.

CLASS

A dozen taut-muscled dancers sit poised for action on the floor of a clean, well-lighted space. At a nearly imperceptible signal from their instructor and an eruption of sound from a piano in the corner, they launch into their daily ritual of exercises. Their movement, invented by Martha Graham, is rooted in the principles of contraction and release. It emanates from the body's gut; this is no arms and legs affair. It requires--beyond strength and endurance--intense inner focus, deep concentration.