Dancing For Charity And, Now, For Pride

It's been no different in other rehearsal halls.

County Board member Walter Tejada (D) clutches his temples while recalling the moment when his dance instructor landed headfirst on the floor as they worked to choreograph a dip.

"It was our first day," Tejada explained, embarrassed by the mishap, which sent the county phone lines abuzz with "Did you hear?"

Since that fateful practice, he's become a skilled hip-swiveler, strutting and shaking across a Clarendon dance studio to the saucy merengue he and partner Lucy Bowen McCauley have selected.

"We're going to win," Bowen McCauley said. "Don't you think we're going to win?"

Tejada is silent.

Antonelli, who has a reputation for zonky behavior -- he's worn a dinosaur suit to county hearings to protest the tax rate -- has never taken a dance lesson. But he's ready to bring it.

He proudly describes the polyester he'll be wearing ("I already had the pants!"), the aqua shirt unbuttoned to the navel and the faux gold chain and medallion that he bought.

Rather than learning a complex dance sequence (Pebley's cha-cha routine would bring any amateur to tears), Antonelli's dance partners have choreographed two minutes set to the Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing."

In it Antonelli preens, vigorously rolls his wrists -- a move many mastered during the 1970s hustle craze -- while his two gal pals gyrate before him.

What he lacks in style he makes up for in bravado. During a recent County Board meeting, Antonelli declared: "Sting like a butterfly, float like a bee, no one in Arlington can dance like me."

"You're going to have to bring it, John," countered event coordinator Sarah Summerville at a recent rehearsal. "I've seen Al [Eisenberg] dance, and he's got it goin' on."

Paired with a belly dancer, Eisenberg will don a red-and-gold-striped caftan and swing a cane through much of the act.

Antonelli is unfazed.

"I don't care if the other contestants dance upside down and buck naked," he said. "They're all going down."