January 22, 1995

EACH of the 15 or so dancers, ranging from preadolescents to thirtysomethings, stood with a hand resting lightly on the ballet barre. The gray winter seaside sky and terra-cotta roofs showed through the broad windows of the second-story dance studio as the students, some in sweats and some in black leotards with tiny transparent skirts over black tights, adjusted themselves for the exercises announced by their teacher, Willa Damien. The dancers, clearly at different technical levels, moved from moments of grace to occasional awkwardness as the dance-phrase combinations became more difficult and rapid. But even to an untrained eye, the technical prowess and the unflinching calm of one dancer, Serena Chu, 16, stood out.

After leading a life shaded by tragedy and personal turmoil, Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz told friends last September that she had decided to leave New York City and her $60-a-week room in a crumbling apartment and move to Minnesota. She told them that she was going to be married there, get a well-paying job and get her son the medical care he needed. But things did not work out as planned. The 34-year-old daughter of Malcolm X did not land a secure job. Her 10-year-old son was placed in a children's shelter, said a person familiar with her situation in Minneapolis.

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman today outlined a proposed state budget that promises a third income tax cut -- just how much the Governor will reveal Monday in her formal budget address -- and includes $160 million in new revenue from a flurry of taxes and fees that would reach all the way down to the pennies people save with supermarket coupons. The proposed $15.9 billion budget to run New Jersey for 12 months starting in July contains some good news for urban schools and state colleges, which would get small increases in aid, but not enough to cover the rate of inflation. There is less good news for municipalities, which will get no increases in state help. And the news is clearly bad for the state's 65,000 employees; about 3,000 of them will be cut from the payroll over 18 months through layoffs, privatization and attrition.

CONSIDER THIS PARADOX: With the help of sound technology, the theater is fast approaching the day when a Broadway show will be a nearly perfect, if artificial, representation of a live performance. Don't underestimate science. To see "Show Boat," at least to the extent that you can recognize the actors and monitor their performances, you have to sit in the orchestra of the huge Gershwin Theater, where the 1927 classic is now in its big, splashy, comfortable Harold Prince revival. Yet if you want to hear the great Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein 2d score, you can't do better than to sit in the Gershwin's rear mezzanine, four rows from the back of the house, as I did the other night.

Treatment Close to Home Seeking to draw new patients, hospitals like Columbia-Presbyterian are setting up clinics in neighborhoods far from their home base, and even overseas. Page 25. Thorny Bosnia Tenure The commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia is finishing his stint there, leaving behind a safer capital but an angry Government. Page 6.