The staid portraits on the walls of the Freshman Union vibrated to a boogie beat last Saturday night, along with approximately 1000 dancing, cheering partygoers who braved drizzling rain to attend what a Union porter termed "the best party here in 12 years."

"I've always wanted to put on a big show," Brett R. Johnson '81 said yesterday. Johnson's only previous experience as a promoter consisted of renting a boat for his senior prom cruise on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. "When I got to Harvard, I realized that this was the place to do it," he said.

While hundreds on the overcrowded dance floor jiggled enthusiastically to the music of Universal Sound, a jazz-oriented group from Boston's Berklee School of Music, others waited patiently in long lines for their share of the nearly 150 gallons of Michelob beer on tap for the event.

Johnson, who may give another party after the Penn game on November 5, would like to see Saturday's profits of about $100 go toward entablishing a student-run "Harvard Party Company Inc.," which he envisions as "an efficient organization in the business of putting on great parties."