C+C's Fast Footwork

There it was, plain as day. On Saturday Night Live two weeks ago, as musical guests C+C Music Factory performed ''MTV Medley'' — with luck the only song we'll ever hear with a in its title — the lithe, curvaceous, stunningly beautiful Zelma Davis belted out three words: ''Everybody dance now.'' A little while later, she did it again. Then, still later — in case you'd just turned on the TV — Zelma Davis sang ''Everybody dance now'' one more time. Coming after the not-yet-settled lawsuit filed last year by session singer Martha Wash, who originally sang those words on C+C's hit record only to see her vocal mimed by Davis on the song's video, it was proof positive. Zelma Davis, indisputably, can sing those three words — and has done so on national TV.

''I didn't really feel the need to prove myself,'' said Davis about an earlier performance, this time impromptu, at the podium of the American Music Awards show, at which C+C Music Factory received no fewer than five citations (it's also nominated for a Grammy). ''Because if I couldn't do what I could do, I would not be on Columbia, the largest label in the world. And they got that way because they know what they're doing.''

If sheer record sales are any indication, C+C Music Factory knows what it's doing, too. Worldwide, almost 5 million copies of its 1990 debut, Gonna Make You Sweat, have been sold, and even now it remains in the top 40 of the Billboard album chart. What's the appeal? A musical approach to dance music the band itself defined best, printed on the back of the album: ''Rock + Soul + Funk + Pop + Techno = C+C Music Factory.'' In short, it throws everything together, and — in hits like ''Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),'' ''Here We Go, Let's Rock and Roll,'' and ''Things That Make You Go Hmmmm....'' — it works.

Critics who don't like dance music — and dance music is the genre in which C+C Music Factory excels — often call it formulaic. But C+C not only provides its own formula, its members — who also include rapper Freedom Williams and, much more crucially, C+C's creators, producers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Robert Clivillés and David Cole — call themselves a factory to save anyone else the effort. ''The excuses you keep hearing about why record companies emphasize rock instead of dance stuff is that dance acts don't sell albums, they don't sustain careers, and they're only as good as their last single,'' says Ken Barnes, senior vice president and editor of the music trade magazine Radio & Records. ''Maybe we have an exception here.''