LIKE a brick thrown through a ballroom window, the results of the New York State wine competition intruded into the Long Island wine industry's 30th-anniversary self-celebration last week.

One half of her face was in shadow, the other half illuminated by light filtering through the ballroom windows; distaste had thinned her lips to lines and drained all colour from her face.

Debby Lee Cohen designed the set, whose imaginative elements included three huge structures that served as ballroom windows, thrones and farm wagons.

He swam toward one of the smashed ballroom windows, knowing he wouldn't make it, trying anyway.

He saw the crowd of students behind the ballroom windows, and then Valerie on her knees, only inches away from him.

The names Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner are inscribed above the ballroom windows on the façade.

I remember the faces of the last passengers as their lifeboats were lowered past the ballroom windows.

He said Patrolman Zhelesnik told him that the officer had looked into a ballroom window and saw "an arm or a leg" and that the view had prompted him to enter the house.

The individual elements are elegant, like the concave recessed arches around the ballroom windows, but the combination is exuberant, even comic.

It looked even grander from this aspect, with the terraces rising to the row of ballroom windows.