SCHOOL DAYS : Rhythm and Shoes

Hammer’s borrowed a few moves from it and “A Different World” featured a dance troupe that specializes in it. It is stepping--and students at African-American college fraternities and sororities have been doing it for decades. Now this 40-year-old dance tradition may be hot on the heels of rap and hip-hop.

Stepping is done in teams of 10 to 16 and combines military precision, foot-stomping, hand-slapping and myriad variations on a few basic movements. It rarely involves music except the performers’ rhythmic shouting and chanting and the percussion of feet hitting pavement and hands slapping against thighs.

“It’s about culture and tradition, keeping ties with our African and American cultures,” says Lybroan James, 23, stepmaster of the Phi Beta Sigma team at UCLA. “It’s also a good way to raise money.”

There are hundreds of stepping competitions, on local and national levels, and most are fund-raisers as well as roof-raisers. At one recent event at UCLA, 16 West Coast teams performed for five hours and raised $72,000 for various charities, including the United Negro College Fund. Audiences are increasingly diverse, though so far step teams remain exclusively black.

The steps, with names like nutcracker, Adidas, under pressure, Furman’s dream or Morocco, are natural pickups for rap and rock groups. There’s even been talk of a film about two rival step teams. “It’s a way of expressing yourself,” says James. “It gives you a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood.”