THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509270043
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
EIGHT WOMEN wedged into a booth at the Waffle House share a few things in common: a rollicking sense of rhythm, a good pair of cowboy boots and a weakness for hash browns smothered in ketchup.
And another thing: Until recently they all hated country music.
Not any more. They're Blakelys Bad Girls, a country line-dancing team. Their music is pure country. ``Baby Likes to Rock It,'' by The Tractors is a favorite. (You know the one: ``Baby likes to rock it like a boogie-woogie choo-choo train.'')
``If anyone had told me two years ago that I'd be listening to country music, let alone dancing to it, I would've said they were crazy,'' said Judi Miller, a Coast Guard civilian worker with a mane of strawberry blond hair that billows out from under her cowboy hat.
Now she and fellow worker Chris Stebbens slip into the Coast Guard file room every day on their lunch hour - with a boombox. They then shuffle their lunch away line dancing among the metal file cabinets.
Dihann Geier polishes her boot-scootin' boogie while her husband is at work and her two children are at school. She says if her old friends in New Jersey, where she lived until four years ago, happened to peer in the windows of her Chesapeake home, they'd have her ``kidnapped and reprogrammed.''
``Country line dancing is unknown in New Jersey,'' she says, laughing. ``I went to my first country bar two years ago kicking and screaming. But as soon as I saw you could dance without a partner and the dances were fun, I was hooked.''
Susan Christopher used to listen to throbbing, head-thumping progressive rock music. One night she found herself in a country music joint. She jumped into an electric slide line, and life hasn't been the same for her since.
``You won't believe how addictive it is,'' she says, her blue eyes sparkling. ``Now I find progressive music so depressing. Country music makes me happy.''
Country converts, that's what these girls are. And please, call them girls, not women - political correctness has nothing to do with country line dancing. Besides, these cowboy hip-hoppers are known as Blakelys Bad Girls - after the Chesapeake country bar they call home.
``Last December I found out that there are line-dancing teams and I started looking around for members,'' says Geier, who spent years studying classical dance and music. ``Every time I saw a girl who had the right look and who danced great I asked her to be on my team.''
At first she included a couple of guys on the team, but the males proved unreliable and Geier gave them the ax.
Besides looking for good dancers, Geier has sought out girls with a certain look: attractive, slender women.
Some of the dancers say they are skinny because of line dancing.
``I lost 40 pounds after I started country line dancing,'' says Geier, who has danced since she was 3 years old. ``I'd let myself get out of shape, but dancing took off the pounds.
Joyce Roughton also slimmed down dancing.
``When you go out and dance for five or six straight hours, you're bound to lose weight,'' she says, checking out her well-toned reflection in a mirror in the Bad Girls' rehearsal room. ``I lost 40 pounds dancing. It's the only exercise I get. Since I started I've gotten muscles where I didn't even know I had muscles.''
The Bad Girls made their competitive debut last winter and snagged second prize.
They've fine-tuned their performance since then and have high hopes for the Step Up To Country/ Make A Wish Dance Foundation festival in Richmond today.
But the grand prize - the world championship country line-dance competition in Nashville - is their target. And Blakelys ladies have paid their entry fees and reserved their rooms.
``We are going to turn a lot of heads,'' predicted Christopher. ``The kind of dancing we're doing is ahead of its time. In five years all the teams will be doing what we're doing.''
What the Bad Girls do is execute carefully choreographed dance numbers while dressed in red-hot costumes. No denim dirndl skirts or ruffles for these girls.
Geier's dance training and background in choreography have come in handy, as she weaves modern dance, tap and jazz moves into the traditional country line dance.
To fine-tune their dancing, the girls meet on Tuesday nights at the Indian River Road YMCA for 2 1/2 hours of nonstop rehearsing.
As captain of the team, Geier is in charge of selecting the music, choreographing the numbers and making sure everyone knows what she's doing and where she's going on the dance floor.
``If you screw up, do it with a big smile on your face,'' she reminded the dancers as two collided during the ``Funky Cowboy.''
``When you do a cha-cha make sure you pass your feet,'' Geier said, executing a neat little cha-cha for effect. ``And make sure you pass your feet on the tush push.''
The Bad Girls watched intently as Geier demonstrated the moves, then tried it themselves.
Then, after Geier told her to ``hit it,'' Jeannette Boone, pregnant and manning the the boombox, switched on the music. Toby Keith's lively ``A Little Less Talk'' filled the room.
``Yee-haw,'' Geier whooped, strutting across the floor in her cowgirl boots, encased in a skin-tight body suit that flashed flesh all the way up to the hip, with a sequined cowboy hat slanted flirtatiously over one eye.
If her friends in Jersey could see her now. ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff color photos
``I lost 40 pounds dancing,'' says Joyce Roughton, a member of
Blakelys Bad Girls. They took their name from a Chesapeake bar.
On some Tuesday nights, the line-dancing team meets at the Indian
River Road YMCA in Chesapeake for 2 1/2 hours of nonstop
rehearsing.
Dihann Geier dances with the Bad Girls while her husband is at work
and her two children are at school.
by CNB