Girls were allowed to practice ballroom dancing for half an hour twice a day to music projected by the huge wooden speaker from an original Victrola record player that remains intact.
The first hint of the looming rebellion came from the lips of Hao Yang, 17, as he practiced ballroom dancing outside Stuyvesant High School on Wednesday morning, the first licks of sunlight casting a long shadow that made a perfect dance partner on the wall behind him.
He was practicing his ballroom dancing skills for his role on the ABC television show "Dancing With the Stars".
IT was another Friday night at Rising Stars Dance Academy here, and Jhanna Volynets had taken her usual seat along the wall, there to watch her daughter, Nicole, 14, and son, Ted, 12, practice ballroom dancing along with a roomful of other young couples.
Such a schedule is unusual in the NFL, the Chargers behaving more like a team prepping to play, say, the Cotton Bowl, meeting in hotel ballrooms and practicing in another team's facility.
Hogan memorized the choreographed footwork for each play, practicing as if dancing in a ballroom.
Practicing contestants filled the corners of a ballroom and spread into the Rosen Plaza Hotel's corridors, allowing enough space to send a yo-yo, or two, into orbit.
Both boys and girls sign up for ballroom and devote much of their time to practicing, dressing up in fancy costumes and competing.
In one gym class, a ballroom dancing teacher urged students to focus on trying to balance textbooks on their heads -- practicing good posture, she said, would help them forget what was going on, despite the sirens blaring outside.
