SO HERE'S the question: What's an 81-year-old great-grandmother doing hopping into a car, driving thousands of miles to Las Vegas and wowing them at a national beauty/talent competition in early December with a snazzy dance routine from "All That Jazz"?

If you know Fredericksburg's Virginia Ann Freeman, you don't need to ask.

You just know that performing is something this blond bombshell of an octogenarian has in her blood.

Since she was a little thing growing up in Petersburg, Freeman lived to move, to run, to dance.

She took all the classes: ballet, tap, stage.

And when so many of her friends let other things take them away from performing, Freeman hung on with a determination that's still with her.

She kept dancing.

At 30, in Winchester, she won the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy in a production of "The Nutcracker."

Even when a growing family took much of her time, she still found time to dance in a show here, to work on a routine there.

In the early '90s, not long after the death of her husband, local businessman Rodney Freeman, Virginia was living in Virginia Beach.

One day she noticed an article in the paper there about a pageant being held in Roanoke to select a Virginia winner to go on to the national Miss Senior Citizen pageant.

She picked up the phone, dialed up the pageant's director and got the scoop.

When the lights went up in Roanoke she was there, in a beaded costume, wearing her dancing shoes and a veteran performer's smile.

Since then, she's been to more pageants than you can count on two hands. She's won the coveted crowns several times, and taken the first- or second-runner-up slot a handful of times as well.

She's almost always in the Top 10, a record she takes pride in.

"Especially when you figure that I'm often the oldest one at these things," she says with a wink. "Not bad for a great-grandmother."

It isn't that she doesn't like her great-grandparent's role, or keeping up with others her own age.