Dirty Dancing Banned in the O.C.

By LAURA COVERSON

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 16, 2006 — A popular high school principal in the wealthy enclave of Aliso Viejo — in California's so-called "O.C." (Orange County) — has put his foot down on "dirty dancing."

Charles Salter has banned all dances until the kids clean up their act, and now parents and schools from California to Connecticut are cheering.

What moved the head of Aliso Niguel High School to make such a drastic move?

"Freak dancing" or "freakin'," an intimate hip-hop dance style between a boy and a girl, or two girls.

"It's basically when two people are like grinding against each other in a kind of sexual way," Aliso Niguel freshman Kori Roberts says.

The 14-year-old attended the "Jungle Dance" this fall that proved to be the last straw for Salter.

"I saw a girl, she was about 14 or 15 years old," Salter says. "She was bent over, dancing with a young man who must have been a junior and he was gyrating and thrusting on top of her."

The principal had been monitoring school dances for several years and had expressed his concerns to parents about the sexual nature of the dancing. There were dance chaperones and lots of conversation about what was allowed and forbidden.

But even at the school's Winter Formal last January it was impossible to keep the atmosphere below fever pitch inside the dark cavernous hall, pulsating with strobe lights and about 1,200 teenagers.

All across the floor girls thrust their rears into their partner's pelvis to the beat of Missy Elliot's "Let Me Work It."

Young couples were grinding away like gears to the pulse of Sisqo's "How Many Licks."

But in September, an exasperated Salter pulled the switch on the back-to-school dance with its jungle theme.

"I closed the dance down early," Salter says. " I came into my office, it must have been about midnight, and I knew I had to address this."

In the wee hours of the morning, Salter fired off an e-mail to parents and teachers:

"Why do our girls have to have themselves so exposed? Why do they have to have cleavage displayed so overtly and slits high up their thighs and then allow boys to dance right up against them? … I am not going to allow this to continue to happen. If there is going to be another dance, then you as parents and your children will have to sit down with me to make some huge changes because I cannot and will not have what my staff and I had to deal with today."

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