They started -- oddly enough, since this was jail -- talking about leading and following on the ballroom-dance floor. Except they really were talking about more than that.

Connie Reichwein of Barefoot Living Ministries stood before the six women inmates in the Richmond City Jail, palms facing forward, explaining how her husband, Ron, would lead her as she stepped backward, the way men lead women in ballroom dancing.

But when Ron pushed, she bent her elbows. When Ron tried stepping backward, she stayed put.

You have to be strong and hold your arms steady to be a follower, she said. You have to be willing to lean on someone trusted, too.

It's an unusual kind of ministry, ballroom dancing in jail, but the volunteers from Barefoot Living have been coming for weeks.

The half-dozen men in the group offered soft, reassuring words as they led the inmates, palm to palm, backward and forward across the cinder-block conference room.

. . .

Celina Campbell, who in a few minutes would be saying she is glad she is in jail, was hesitant at first -- especially when Connie Reichwein directed the women to close their eyes as the men led them.

On the other hand, when she turned the tables and told the men to close their eyes and be led, stepping backwards with eyes closed is harder than it seems, as Ron Reichwein said to a still-somewhat-gingerly-stepping Conner Kirkland.

Kirkland never has been in jail before. It's a frightening place, she confesses.

Nor had she ever gone ballroom dancing.

But by the end of the session, after three increasingly fluid rounds of the foxtrot and a laugh-filled couple of swing-dance sets, she was pirouetting under Mike Savino's lead to Barry Manilow's "Big Fun" -- a final dance that saw Savino trying out some high-kicking, shimmy-like, rock-back-step-forward moves that you somehow just don't associate with jail.

Or with a more serious message.

. . .

Barefoot Living is a Richmond group from many denominations that tries to teach leadership and life skills through the delights of dancing.

At the Richmond jail, where volunteers from the group are halfway through a six-month pilot program to see if their approach might work behind bars, that can mean letting women inmates feel what it's like to be asked nicely to dance or to be thanked for a pleasant spin across the makeshift behind-bars ballroom.

"You deserve to be treated like ladies," Connie Reichwein explained.

It means hinting at the pleasure of saying yes, when God approaches -- for, as Reichwein said, God is the one who always takes the first step.

It means beginning to feel you can trust someone to lead and understanding the strength it takes to be a follower.

"I know it is hard to be here," Reichwein said as inmates and volunteers gathered in a circle to chat, as they stopped to catch their breath.

"I'm glad I'm here," Campbell replied. She feels a sense of freedom, of peace -- away from the man for whom she sold heroin. It will be her last time in jail, though, she added. She said she's going to be strong, going forward.

"You can say yes or no," volunteer Hannah Savino said, leaning forward intently. "You have that right."

Campbell nodded.

It means a lot, Kirkland said, to have someone from the outside come.

"I love dancing," she said. And then, waving goodbye as she headed back to her unit: "I feel like I'm going to cry."