Too Close For Comfort

By Leslie Berestein and David Robinson

The perennial crackdown on naughty dancing is under way. At Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Md., administrators concerned about the rise in so-called freak dancing, a hip-grinding, sex-simulating step, recently increased the number of chaperones and gave them flashlights to bust dirty dancers. Several Los Angeles high schools have benched the C-walk, a hip-hop dance step popularized by rappers like Lil Bow Wow. The C stands for Crip--the Crips are a notorious L.A. gang credited with introducing the dance at least a decade ago. It has long since crossed gang lines, but school officials say the C-walk glamorizes gang life.

Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychologist who studies adolescents, hears a familiar tune. "Adults have always been upset by the provocative nature of teenage dancing," he says. "When the twist was introduced, high school principals were saying they wanted to ban that."

As for freaking, says Georgetown Prep's dean of students, Jeff Jones: "Our policy is, if they wouldn't do it in front of their parents or their priest, then they wouldn't do it here." But then again, weren't their parents doing the bump?

--By Leslie Berestein and David Robinson