Prospective dancers enter their chosen career with the knowledge that they will have to make a transition at some point -- whether later, after a relatively long and fulfilling career, or sooner, due to injury or other unforeseen circumstances.

But few have one foot in the dance studio and another in a narcotics and vice unit.

Angela Cipparone doesn't have stars in her eyes. She knows that she will have to hang up her dancing shoes one day -- that's a given in the daily balancing act of dance. But Cipparone, a bubbling dark-haired beauty, has her sights set on an unusual post-dance career: as an investigative specialist in the FBI.

The La Roche College senior and dance major has heard all the jokes by now about her criminal justice minor, but she's dead serious.

As an only child growing up in New Jersey, she hung out with three cousins, all boys. A tomboy at heart, she readily played football and a game called jailbreak. "I always wanted to be a cop," she says with a bright, Crest-perfect smile.

Then she became attracted to dance -- at least the athleticism of it. "But once you understand it," she notes, "you realize that it's not only fun, it's also an art."

The scales started tipping in favor of studying dance in college, but where? One of Cipparone's teachers knew Gerard Holt, head of the dance department at La Roche. It helped that it was in the Pittsburgh region -- she was a big Steelers fan.

"I fell in love with the atmosphere at La Roche," she says earnestly. And when she matriculated to the McCandless school, she found that the dance students hung out together, even when they weren't dancing. "We're all best friends, one big family."

She also had to declare a minor, a policy that has been in place since Holt arrived at the school. "You've got to do something because you can't dance forever,'' says Holt, a former Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre dancer. "It's a good thing to be prepared or have a backup plan."

He explains that even though criminal justice is a difficult subject, his new student wanted to be a double major. But that would take five years and "she figured out that it would be too much."

So Cipparone was content with a criminal justice minor. In her mind, it related nicely to dance. "They might not seem the same, because one wears a tutu and the other wears a gun," she says with a laugh. "But they're both very disciplined fields; it's just a different etiquette."

Cipparone treads a fine line, darting back and forth between forensics and kinesiology, theories of criminal deviants and dance composition. Although she takes a ballet class five days a week, she has targeted a career in contemporary dance, where Cipparone figures her versatility will come into play. "I like to see a dancer who can do ballet and modern and do them well," she says.

That attitude has led to featured roles in the La Roche College Dance Theatre, from Holt's "Mahalia," inspired by former gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and Fanny Cerrito in the classically oriented "Pas de Quatre," to the more contemporary "Not Without Me" by Gina Desko.

Wednesdays, though, are reserved for her internship at the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. There, under the guidance of detective Brian Fleming, she is learning techniques on firearm investigation from the point of recovery and how to go about tracing the ownership.

For example, if a gun is involved in a robbery, Fleming explains, Cipparone is learning how the crime lab provides the serial number and fingerprints. From the police report, Cipparone traces the gun through the state's registration logs. If there is no record, then she proceeds to the federal data banks.

"She is learning how to take an investigation and walk through the process," says Fleming. "It gives her a good background on police work and how law enforcement thinks." He adds that Cipparone "pays attention to detail and is conscious of the work she does with minimal correction."

Besides, the veteran detective says, "dancing builds character. It gives her a little head start."

Despite the fact that she spends most of her time with a computer, Cipparone loves the work. She never had any illusions about the glitz and glam of television shows such as "CSI," although she concedes that she loves "Law & Order: SVU" for some relaxation. And she hasn't had experience with firearms, except for pellet guns in her NJROTC unit in high school.

Her future plans are firmly in place. She wants to start out as a state trooper to gain experience for several years before applying to the FBI. Cipparone figures she has another leg up on the other applicants: You have to pass a physical exam.

And what better preparation than dancing?