Dancing For Charity And, Now, For Pride
Competitiveness Flares For County's Notables

By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006

It was somewhere between the rapid-fire cha-chas and the cross-body spins that Jim Pebley's dancing feet had a meltdown.

Coming to a halt in the basement of his dance instructor's Falls Church home, his khakis rumpled and his black T-shirt wet with perspiration, the Arlington County planning commissioner and former Navy pilot signaled defeat.

"My poor little brain is fried," he moaned, sweat dripping down his temples. "My feet just won't do it."

Well, they better, and soon, if Pebley has any chance of winning the big dance contest tonight -- the one many favor him to win -- between county officials and other area notables.

The event is a takeoff of the popular television show "Dancing With the Stars" and is designed to help a local nonprofit group, the kind of quirky charity thing that people felt compelled to support. If they couldn't dance, they figured, at least it would be entertaining.

Then things got serious. Playful trash talk among contestants devolved into catty e-mails. Favorites to win were singled out, left-footers were privately derided and bets were taken on who might chicken out.

This was no longer a charitable contest between would-be dancers. No, civic activists and elected officials -- Arlington County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman (D) and Del. Albert C. Eisenberg (D-Arlington) among them -- realized they would soon face off under the disco ball for those ever-coveted bragging rights.

The game was on.

"This has turned out to be more of a fight than the elections," said civic activist and longtime County Board antagonist John Antonelli, who will don polyester, a wide '70s collar and an air of ballroom flamboyance to compete tonight at the black-tie-optional affair in Ballston. "There's no question who's favored to win," he said. "Me."

Pebley, the only contestant with ballroom cred -- he and his wife have taken lessons for the better part of six years -- said he's trying to manage expectations that he's the favorite.

"John Antonelli is the real ringer," Pebley said. "Rumor has it he's taking lessons from Michael Flatley to learn the great Irish 'Great Balls of Your Feet on Fire' dancing showcase."

Now, now boys.

The sponsors said they came up with the idea to help Bonder and Amanda Johnson Community Development Corp. and its efforts to support affordable housing in Arlington's Nauck neighborhood.

Sure, all involved said they wanted to back the effort, but no one raced to lace up tap shoes. In time, contestants relented, most of them under pressure from spouses or the weight of the greater good.

With tickets going for $60, sponsors hope to bring in as much as $25,000 to support Nauck's social services center, which they say has been overloaded with requests to help residents develop life-skills plans, personal budgets and housing assistance, among other things.

Zimmerman, who jokes (we think) that his coordination is limited to climbing stairs, has been among the most reluctant of the nine contestants. He said he agreed to the competition only because he couldn't say no to a close friend leading the charge.

So tonight he dances.

"It's a thought that fills me with trepidation," Zimmerman said.

"We don't want the expectations to be too high," he added dryly.

Not to worry.

Even Pebley, who knows his way around a dance floor, winces at the thought of fumbling before 350 hors d'oeuvres-grubbing spectators.

"I know I'm going to drop you," Pebley warned dance partner Bonnie Friedman as they worked through a complex series of steps.

"If you drop me, you're coming down with me so it looks like it's planned," Freidman shot back.

"If I drop you," Pebley lamented, his tone filled with dread, "I'm crawling out of the room."

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."