BLUE TIGHTS

A black teen-age girl's search for love and belonging through her efforts at dancing. Joyce Collins, living in Queens, N.Y., with her single mother, is at that stage where she is so self-absorbed that she cannot see her own possibilities. Her figure is so developed that she gets hisses, whistles, and propositions from street dudes and ridicule from her socalled friends and dance classmates. When she successfully performs in an African dance troupe, she begins to see her own worth and is more able to visualize her future opportunities. Meanwhile, she has to learn to cope with sexual urges, relationships with her mother and other adults, and her feeling of not belonging anywhere. There's a tree-to-life, very New York feel to the story; but there are also many technical dance references, and the author's attempt to touch on all possible adolescent concerns--sex, having babies, living conditions, going to middle-class schools--gives the story a certain superficiality. Still, Joyce is so real that urban teen-agers should be able to relate to her.