Rhumba For Gold? Ballroom Dancers Campaign For Olympic Recognition

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The gods peered down from their Mount Olympus perch, and the people cried: Make ballroom dancing an official Olympic sport.

Several thousand years ago, in the days of minotaurs, titans and nymphs, gods were routinely the object of urgent overtures: Help us win this battle, make our crops grow, make our hunting fruitful.

But they never heard a plea like this one.

Next summer, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based Hanlon Ford Enterprises will produce ceremonies in Greece marking the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympics. Their lavish production, replete with nearly 300 dancers and a chariot pulled by horses, will be an attempt to persuade the International Olympic Committee to make ballroom dancing an Olympic event.

Flighty? Maybe. Shameless? Probably. Heartfelt? Absolutely.

"Mythology is the love of my life," said Marguerite Hanlon, who studied it at Harvard before becoming one of the nation's best-known theatrical dancers with her partner, John Ford. "And so is dancing. It's what I do."

In recent years, especially in Europe and Asia, it's what a lot of people do. Hundreds of thousands of ballroom dancers travel the globe for dozens of competitions. Some are the hottest ticket in town, filling 10,000-seat arenas. Others earn prime-time spots on German television.

Along with another sport that doesn't exactly stir images of Ancient Greece - surfing - the IOC last spring granted provisional status to ballroom dancing, officially dubbed "dance sport" in a 1989 attempt to upgrade its image.

Now the giants of the sport have raised their public-relations campaign to a crescendo that could allow them to rhumba for the gold in 2004.

"We're doing everything we can to shake, rattle and roll the feathers," said Ken Richards, marketing director of Arthur Murray International dance studios in Coral Gables, Fla. "We make as much of a big deal about it as we can, and wave the Olympic banner around. It is getting intense."

So far, though, U.S. Olympics officials haven't exactly broken into the cha-cha over the idea. One of them, in published reports, snapped, "If you can smoke and drink while you're actually competing, that's not a sport."

Of course, badminton players have been known to break for a martini, and that's an Olympic sport.

So, undeterred, dancers quietly pieced together a remarkable campaign. At one point, fitness experts at Freiburg University in Germany attached electrodes to athletes and measured carbon dioxide in their blood. Their conclusion: Doing the quickstep for 90 seconds takes as much energy as running an 800-meter race.

"Dancing is a massive test of endurance," said Peter Pover, vice president of the International Dance Sport Federation. "There is enormous stamina required. And they're doing it dressed to the nines, and smiling as if they were enjoying it. And the girl is doing it backwards. In high heels."

Some say dancers have made too much of their official "recognition," which comes with no guarantees of actual Olympic competition.

"Recognition just means, OK, we recognize you," said Veronika Williams, a U.S. Olympic Committee spokeswoman. "All it means is OK, you're a sport."

The next step, then, is to prove it worthy of the Games themselves, and dance officials are forming their strategy. For example, seeking extra exposure at the 2000 games in Sidney, Australia, Pover's federation is planning to hold several championships there before the games begin. Normally, the country might play host to one championship every three years.

"We want the sporting public to become saturated," Pover said.

The campaign also includes productions like Hanlon's. In it, dancers make a case to include ballroom dancing in the Olympics. Zeus, ruler of the Gods, "thinks that's a pretty good idea," she said. Poseidon, God of the sea and earthquakes - "he's a troublemaker anyway" - is not so sure.

Considering who's behind it, the ending is hardly suspenseful.

"They are going to accept the dancers," Hanlon said. "Well, of course they are."