Dance Dance Evolution

Disco Never Died; It Just Went Back Underground. Now, a New Generation of Music Lovers Embraces the Beat.

When "Saturday Night Fever" thrust its hips into America 30 years ago today, disco had already detonated in Washington. Dance palaces lined the streets of Georgetown, downtown and the strip off South Capitol Street. Within a year the sequin-spangled fallout had blanketed the suburbs.

In many ways disco was a uniter. It was continuous dancing to continuous music, a concept that bloomed during the '70s, when people needed a driving, positive sound to blot out the malaise and discord in the world. It also meant different things to different people. One person's disco track could be another's funk. Or boogie. Or soul. Or house, which is what disco evolved into in the '80s.

"It had its R&B side, it had its jazz side, it had even a classical side," says Frederick resident Bernard Lopez, proprietor of DiscoMusic.com. "It was a white thing, it was a black thing, it was a Hispanic thing. It was a wonderful melting pot of different types of music. Where else could you hear violins and congas in one song?"

At the end of '77, John Travolta and the Bee Gees touched off the mainstreaming, commercialization and, ultimately, the bastardization of disco. It got too big too fast. Eventually everyone was in on it, which meant no one was in on it. All of a sudden people were burning disco records, and the sensation became a punch line that remains punchy to this day.

Disco mania bit the dust in the early '80s, but disco itself (and its dance culture)

went back underground, where it started and where it lives on. Even here. Today. Disco is alive, in many ways and forms, from DJ booths in Dupont Circle and Northeast Washington to a

retro cover band in Adams Morgan to a hustle school in Fairfax County. To explore these finds, turn to Page 4.

ON THE DANCE FLOOR: Never Can Say Goodbye

Every Monday night, a discotheque erupts in a second-floor dance studio just outside the Capital Beltway in Fairfax. At 9 p.m., the fluorescent lights blink out and colored spotlights pop on. Disco balls rotate and "Fly Robin Fly" comes on.

And people dance the hustle. ( Do it.)

The first lady of hustle, Joyce Szili, 55, teaches it for beginners at 7:30 and intermediate dancers at 8:15. ( Do it.)

Then the experts -- the people who danced it on the D.C. club scene during discomania -- glide onto the floor. ( Do do do doo-doo doo-doo do do, do do do doo-doo doo-doo do do.)

People drive from Richmond and Baltimore to do this.