Culture : In S. Africa, a Ballroom Dancing Craze : It’s the fastest-growing sport among youth in the beleaguered black townships.

Twelve-year-old Molaodi Machitje shares a small room with four siblings on a dirt street in one of this township’s poorest neighborhoods. Gangs prowl trash-strewn lots nearby. His tumbledown school operates sporadically. And violence is a daily fact of life.

But each evening, inside the local YMCA, Molaodi (pronounced moh-LOUD-ee) raises his chin proudly, draws his thin, 4-foot frame to attention, takes 12-year-old Gugu Nkosi’s left hand in his and places his right hand, fingers straight, behind her back.

Then, in the dim light, they dance a fox trot on a dusty floor with missing tiles, moving purposefully to an arrangement of “The Lady in Red,” his favorite tune, which comes in scratchy bursts from an aging turntable.

“When he gets onto that floor, he just floats,” said an admiring Mary Machitje, Molaodi’s 18-year-old sister. “He’s proud. It’s as if he’s been dancing for years.”

“When I dance,” Molaodi said later, “I feel like I want to be a champion. I want to take first place.”

As dusk settles on South Africa’s impoverished, overcrowded townships, and the smoky coal fires are lit, tens of thousands of black boys and girls like Molaodi and Gugu hold each other close and dance into a fantasy world of high society. The boys, in bow ties and ruffled shirts, and the girls, in secondhand ball gowns, do the waltz, the fox-trot, the tango and the quickstep.

Ballroom dancing has become the fastest-growing sport in the townships, offering discipline, pride, self-respect--and even a taste of glamour--for children struggling to become adults in a society pervaded by riots, crime, school boycotts and hopelessness.

“Dancing is changing many people’s lives,” said Jabu Vilakazi, chairman of the Africa Dance Academy, an association with 15,000 black child dancers countrywide. “People have changed from being hooligans to well-behaving people because of it.

“You learn a lot of manners in dancing. And you have to maintain your discipline,” he added. “You can’t just go into the hall with your cap on. You’ve got to behave yourself, man.”

On a recent Saturday night, 250 black dancers, ranging in age from 5 to 55, gathered for a dance contest beneath the chandeliers of Johannesburg’s City Hall.

Nervous youngsters from embattled townships such as Soweto, Sebokeng and Soshanguve practiced their steps in the hallways. Out on the dance floor, as hundreds of family and friends looked on, couples with contest numbers safety-pinned to their backs waltzed to the strains of “Three Times a Lady” by the Commodores. Three judges, two of them white, watched solemnly, jotting notes onto clipboards.

“Dancing is better than soccer or basketball,” said Dumisani Barayi, a 10-year-old from Tsakane township, near Johannesburg. Dumisani had a stylish flattop haircut and wore a red bow tie, matching cummerbund and spit-polished patent leather loafers. His partner and cousin, Mali, 9, wore a white halter gown with a white bow tied in her hair.

“We don’t play roughly,” Dumisani said. “We don’t hit each other. We just dance. It’s fun.”

Dumisani’s mother, Rosemary, a school principal, said she supports her son’s dancing because “it keeps him busy all the time. There are many bad influences. It’s very difficult to raise kids in the townships today.” And, she added, “People who dance are disciplined and they have respect.”

No one knows for sure when ballroom dancing first came to South Africa, but it arrived decades ago, probably handed down by the former British colonizers. Britain still is the home of competitive ballroom dancing, followed by Germany and Japan.

South African dance remains divided between white and black associations, although multiracial contests--but not partners--have been common for years. Separate black and white champions were crowned annually until recently. Now the national championships for children and adults include all races, and a Colored (mixed-race) couple holds the current crown.

The black Africa Dance Academy, which was started in 1968, now has 500 member clubs nationwide, and the number is growing.

Ballroom dancing offers an unusual opportunity for children as well as adults in the townships. Basketball courts, tennis courts, soccer fields and golf courses may be abundant in white areas of South Africa, but they are rare in the townships. Even diversions such as shopping malls, pinball parlors and zoos are scarce in black areas.

And those children fortunate enough to avoid the gangs and troublemakers can usually be found playing homemade games with balled-up tin cans and sticks in the dusty streets.

Most black parents see dancing as a way to get their children off those dangerous streets. But, more than that, they believe it instills confidence in their children, teaching them a skill that they can carry into adulthood.

A decade ago, in the Tony-award-winning play, “Master Harold . . . and the Boys,” South African author Athol Fugard created two black characters whose love for ballroom dancing gave purpose to their sad lives and a sense of African self-respect in a land of privileged whites.

“Ballroom dancing appeals to blacks tremendously,” said Trevor Haramis, a 42-year-old banker and former South African amateur champion. Haramis, who is white, now is an internationally accredited dance judge, and every week he crisscrosses the country, watching blacks and whites compete for dance trophies.

Although Haramis sees “great potential” among black ballroom dancers, few have reached the standards required for international competition, held back primarily by a lack of money to take private lessons.

Molaodi Machitje and Gugu Nkosi are among 50 youngsters who show up for the daily rehearsals at the YMCA in Orlando East, Soweto’s oldest neighborhood. Mike Setle, who works as a manager for the local Toyota car plant, and Sello Matlhaku, who is unemployed, teach the children steps for both ballroom dances and Latin American dances.

As the children danced there recently, the instructors checked their posture, their footwork and their timing, bombarding them with directions. “Dancing is like a display. It has to be impressive,” Matlhaku told a group of students. “And you always have to be on the beat.”

Because the children cannot afford private lessons in Johannesburg, Setle and Matlhaku take occasional lessons themselves, paying the $25-an-hour fees from their own pockets, then passing along what they learn to the youngsters.

Matlhaku, a tall, strapping 26-year-old, took up dancing a decade ago after he broke his ankle playing soccer.

“It’s an unusual sport,” Matlhaku said. “Some people don’t fancy it. But it’s my sport and I can’t run away from it. People may think it’s an easy thing, but it’s not. Yet when you’re on that dance floor you feel different somehow. You feel very classical.”

Among other things, the ballroom classes help young boys and girls get to know each other. “Boys are often scared of girls at this age,” Matlhaku said. “But this creates good communication between them.”

And while some of the young dancers say they are teased by friends who call this a “sissy sport,” ballroom dancing also has a certain snob appeal in the townships, where the trophies won by young dancers are proudly displayed on countertops in many a tin shack and three-room concrete home.

Ntando Majola, a 17-year-old from Soshanguve, near Pretoria, gave up his interest in karate six months ago to start dancing. “My friends do criticize it,” Majola said. “They say it isn’t useful. If you are attacked, you can’t use it. But I just ignore them.”

Beverly Nkosi, Gugu’s 19-year-old sister, sees the dance classes as an escape, however brief, from township life.

“When you see someone dancing, you think it could be you,” she said. “It’s something we can do. White and black, we are just the same when we dance. It shows us that you can do anything if you are serious about it.”

It only costs about $10 to join the YMCA’s dance club for a year. But the cost of contest entry fees and transportation, as well as the clothes and shoes required to compete, is beyond the means of many Sowetans.

Molaodi Machitje, whose parents are both unemployed, had to borrow $2 from his grandmother, who works in a bottle factory, to enter the recent regional dance contest in Johannesburg’s City Hall.

“When the children are going to dance, and we haven’t got the money, we start getting worried,” said Molaodi’s aunt, Rebecca Mokoena. Sometimes, when there’s not enough money at home, Molaodi stays home to let his sister compete.

Molaodi and Gugu didn’t win the City Hall contest. One of the judges told them that Molaodi needed to keep his left hand higher, and that is something they plan to work on.

But Molaodi has won several dozen trophies in his four years of dancing, and the family keeps them in the only cabinet in their house. His success on the dance floor has turned him into a mature, well-spoken 12-year-old gentleman with dreams of one day becoming an engineer.

When his friends criticize his chosen sport, he tells them: “I don’t care what you say. I do it for myself.” And that he does. “I just love to dance,” Molaodi said. “And when I win, I feel so proud. It makes me want to become a professional.”