AS the summer wanes into autumn, the set dancing community in the northeast migrates to the tip of the Jersey Shore for the annual Connie Ryan Memorial Cape May Dance Weekend, one of the most popular events on the set dancers' calendar anywhere. The Victorian seaside town seems a perfect venue that attracts the hardcore from many states. It usually sells out its complement of rooms at the Inn of Cape May (a Victorian Inn) and the more modern Atlas Inn nearby with full package rates with meals, but maybe you'll get lucky and there will be a cancellation there.

There are also plenty of other accommodation and dining options available in the resort town off-season that will still allow you to attend the various events on the weekend where a la carte admission plans are also on offer.

This year it occurs on Friday to Sunday, September 28-30, and it includes three set dance workshops with Padraig and Roisin McEneany, Ceilithe on Friday and Saturday nights and also a late Saturday afternoon concert. The music should be first rate with John Whelan (accordion), Bernadette Fee (fiddle), Brendan and Felix Dolan (flute and piano) and Jimmy Kelly Senior on drums.

Dancers have been flocking here since 1987 when Diana and Ron Jensen of the Greater Washington Ceili Club launched the first Cape May weekend two decades ago.

The senior set dancing couple, Joe and Siobhan O'Donovan from Cork City, were the first dancing masters to teach at the then quaint and historic Congress Inn in the early days of the set dancing conversion in the U.S.

Octogenarians now at 89, they are fully retired in their Mayfield home and look back fondly on their great work in the U.S. with over five extended tours helping to spark the interest in set dancing over here.

The late Connie Ryan took up the tutorial role in 1988 after the first seminal barnstorming tour of his infamous Slievenamon Set Dancing Club earlier that year fueled the flames of the country house dance tradition on both sides of the ocean.

Ryan's indefatigable enthusiasm and teaching skills matched by his irrepressible wit and flirtatious charm helped build this weekend to the massive success that it became, and gave it its identity after his passing. Mick Mulkerrin taught the year that Connie succumbed to cancer in 1997, and then Slievenamon colleagues Padraig and Roisin McEneany took up the reins and have popularly returned yearly since 1998.

More information can be obtained from the weekend coordinator Linda Fitzpatrick who took over from the Jensens as the principal organizer of the Cape May caper for a number of years, keeping it running at tip top form. She is reachable at 301-933-2926 or at http://members .aol.com/irishGWCC/.