ELEGANTLY BALLROOM: SOUTHEAST STUDENTS LEARNING BAROQUE DANCES FOR PERFORMANCE

Beneath her elegant dress, a corset kept Dr. Janice LaPointe-Crump's spine erect and a pannier gave the illusion of improbably wide hips. She curtsied and diverted her eyes when greeting a male visitor.

If this weren't Parker Dance Studio, she easily could have fit into the court of Louis XIV.

Thirty Southeast students and community members attended a master class LaPointe-Crump taught Wednesday at Parker Dance Studio. Titled "The Elegant Courtier: Basic Ballroom Dances," the class provided instruction in such dances as the Courante, the Bourree, the Minuet, the Gavotte, the Loure, contradances and quadrilles.

Today, LaPoint-Crump ends a three-day residency in Baroque dance at Southeast Missouri State University. The residency is part of the Bach Festival 2000 under way at the university.

Wednesday's free class in basic ballroom dance will be repeated from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. today at Parker Dancer Studio. At 7 tonight, LaPointe-Crump and members of the class will present "Baroque Dance and Bach," a public performance in period costumes. Admission will be charged.

LaPointe-Crump is a professor of dance at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. Joining her for the residency are Susan Friday, artistic director of the Denton Civic ballet, and pianist Susan Myatt, a professor of dance music Texas Woman's University.

At Wednesday night's class, one male had a Mohawk haircut. Another who was chewing gum had it promptly confiscated. The man who built Versailles would not have approved. In Louis XIV's court, the rules of etiquette were codified.

Curtsy is short for courtesy.

Women were not permitted to look anyone directly in the face.

Men, on the other hand, were to have a commanding look. "You're trying to find her eyes," LaPointe Crump said.

This era was all about delicacy, indirectness, coyness, teasing and flirting, she said. This was a public way of being in court that did not extend into the bedroom chamber, LaPointe-Crump said.

The manner of dress in Louis XIV's court had a purpose, LaPointe-Crump says. The restriction of the corset was more than physical, it was meant to encourage women to express gentility.

By the time girls were 14 or 15, their bodies had been permanently altered by wearing corsets, LaPointe-Crump said. But today companies require workers to wear belts that have some of the same effects as a corset, she pointed out.

LaPoint-Crump is not reticent about crediting the Baroque period with influencing 21st century life. "Any dance style that has to do with formations ... came out of 17th and 18th century court dancing," she said. That includes square dancing and even high school drill teams.

Jazz and ballet both have roots in courtly dancing, she says. Very little of the music was written down. Baroque musicians and dancers improvised.

Indeed, Bach's music often has been arranged for jazz musicians.

The luxurious excesses of Louis XIV's court are well documented, but LaPointe-Crump says the man who was France for 72 years made avid court dancers out of America's more democratically inclined Founding Fathers.