LI dancers hope they get 'Live to Dance' spot

In their leg-baring, World War II-style tap-dancing outfits, the 17 ladies of the Long Island troupe The Red Hot Mamas seem much younger than the 48 to 81 years old that they are - as viewers could see for themselves last night on the premiere of the CBS competition "Live to Dance," where they appeared briefly in a segue with host Andrew Günsberg after having been featured in TV commercials and online promos for the show. They were taped for, and hopefully will be seen performing in, a future episode.

Whatever happens, the girls, as co-director Louise Rastu calls them, are anything but tapped-out.

"The most challenging thing wasn't the dancing," says Rastu, 48, of Huntington Station, "but the 17 pages of paperwork - per person! All on a computer. And let me tell you, five of our ladies don't have a computer. A couple don't even have cells phones!"

The 25-year-old troupe, founded by Toni Wortman at former Radio City Rockette Sandi Bloomberg's North Shore Studio of Dance, auditioned at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan in mid-October, made the cut and performed for the show in its "New York Dome," which was put up for three days in Liberty State Park in New Jersey.

"We come in all different shapes and sizes, from differences backgrounds and cultures, and with different abilities," Rastu says of the Red Hots. "And what's great is that we all share this one passion: dance."