ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997 TAG: 9704100089
SECTION: QUICK LOOK PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER
If you to go the Post School of Ballet in Roanoke on Wednesday, you can dance, but you won't have to wear a tutu. Contra dancing, from 7 to 10 p.m., is the order of the evening and you don't have to know a thing about it. Workshops will be given to teach the sets - series of steps - and you take off from there, keeping the dances simple or adding your own twists and turns.
Contra is a combination of square dancing and whatever else you want to throw into it. It has added bit and pieces from Colonial country dance to today's swing dance.
And the music - ahh! Wild Asparagus, a nationally known country dance band, is sure to set at least your toes tapping. The event is sponsored by the Blue Ridge Country Dancers who get together every second Saturday at the Post School. But they're looking for a bigger place to dance.
Look for the red door at 1324 Grandin Road and wear shoes that won't mark the wooden floor. Admission this time is $7. Call 265-1861 or 745-4123 for more info. Birthday a good day to get glimpses of Jefferson's life A street, a center, a surgical clinic, a motor lodge, a foundation, a restaurant and more local sites are named for a man we don't know ever came here. But we know he came close.
Thomas Jefferson liked this area of his home state enough to build a hideaway, Poplar Forest, that historians and archaeologists think is important enough to spend years restoring. And Sunday is his birthday
It seems an appropriate time to wind your way through a tour of Jefferson's Virginia. Points range from far away - the State Capitol, Colonial Williamsburg, the College of William and Mary - to doable in a day or so - Monticello, University of Virginia, Natural Bridge, Poplar Forest, Tuckahoe Plantation and Barboursville Vineyards.
All the locations have significance in Jefferson's life. Virginia's largest estate bottled winery, Barboursville Vineyards, surrounds the site of a mansion Jefferson designed for a friend. He was a student at William and Mary. We all know about Monticello. He was the first American owner of Natural Bridge and described it as ``sublime.'' As a boy, he studied at Tuckahoe Plantation.
Call (888) 293-1776 for details.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Contra dancers whirl to the music. FILE 1991by CNB2. The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, designed by Thomas
Jefferson, was completed in 1826.