Redemption and Pathos

Someone’s parents once said: “You kids today don’t ever touch each other when you dance.” These were not my parents but, nevertheless, lately I seem to have taken the admonishment to heart.

First up, a friend calls to see if I want to join her at the Derby, the best-known swing-dancing bar in L.A. Since she has been there before and knows her stuff, she suggests I attend the 8 p.m. swing-dancing lesson to brush up. I agree, considering I took ballroom dance in college but have forgotten everything except the indelible image of that one guy who cha-cha-cha-ed while deliberately running his hand through his hair like a sad, bad movie star.

That night, a Wednesday, I show up at the door of the Derby at 8:05, figuring I’ll be the only person there and will spend the hour talking to the teacher about teaching. Having forgotten about the movie “Swingers” up to that point, I remember very fast when the bouncer informs me that the class is full to capacity and I’ll just have to wait at the bar until 9, when the dancing starts for everybody. “Full?” I say. “What do you mean, full?” I picture 20 people in a small, cramped room, talking to the teacher about teaching. No. On this night, which is apparently like most nights at the Derby, 125 people were on time for the lesson. I am flat-out stunned. A few men in suspenders breeze past. Two underage guys in bowlers and black suit jackets try to get in, but their licenses are ridiculously fake. I skulk around, deciding what to do, still surprised that so many people drive in fast from their work weeknights to learn how to do that little back-step thing that reminds me of taking cotillion in sixth grade and holding boys’ hands and feeling like a human broom.

I go upstairs to the bar, with its irregularly shaped blue and purple chairs, and talk to two guys who are also sitting around and waiting. One is making mean jokes at the expense of his friend, who is mostly quiet but does say he has come here before and likes to swing dance. My friend shows up in a flurry at 9, and the lesson room is just opening up; out pour people, as if from a high school gymnasium dance, in more suspenders, more bowler hats, young men dressed as gangsters in carefully pressed pinstriped suits, women wearing T-strap sandals and straight skirts from the ‘40s that hit just at the knee, revealing the anachronistic tattoo of a snake down their shins. I spy the occasional poofy poodle skirt, which seems like the wrong decade to me. We enter the gym-ish room, wood floored, with piped-in music from the band. This is the space designated for the less skillful dancers. The really good people go directly in front of the band and fly over each other and slide out from between legs and celebrate the end of the Depression and the success of World War II. There is a real absence of ‘90s jadedness here. Swing dancing is sincere. Formal dancing, in general, is not ironic.

I dance with both of the guys I talked to in the bar, and am pleased to see that the one who was mean is not a good dancer and is trying to get by by making more mean jokes, which doesn’t work, and that his friend, the shy one, is generous and graceful on the dance floor. They are probably seven years younger than me and remind me of some of my students, so I want to encourage them but think that might be taken as rude. I dance with instructive men who give me tips (“resist more with your arms!”) and others who barely look me in the eye, a suspendered guy who drove up from Orange County specifically and says he does so three times a week. I am aware of an acute throwback-to-high-school feeling but even weirder is the notion that it isn’t even my high school I am throwing back to, but my mother’s.

My girlfriend finds a dance partner of yore out in the throngs, and he pulls out a little crumpled slip of paper on which are written dance step instructions. They try to read and interpret his handwriting (“what does right arm whoop mean?”) and soon are doing complicated step sequences. I admire their skill. At a certain point, I’m done. I sit and watch everyone and have a glass of water.

*

Different evening is spent at El Floridita, on Fountain Avenue and Vine Street in Hollywood, a Cuban restaurant with a small wooden dance floor surrounded by tables for dinner. We’re going salsa dancing on this night. I am with a group, including one couple who is savvy about salsa and is prepared to teach the rest of us. Where did you learn to salsa dance? I ask the guy. He says Kentucky.

In front of the dance floor is a 10-or-so-piece band, including flute, unusual drums, several kinds of guitars, a singer. The whole room is dimly lighted and smells of garlic and mushrooms and marinated meats. Although it’s about one-fourth the size of the Derby’s swing-dancing room, if that, there are still a lot of people here, in a whole variety of dress--some men in suits, others in jeans, women in small dresses, their hair up. I keep thinking of the word “dignity.” Salsa dancers don’t smile. Unlike swing dancing, which seems to ring of celebration, of economic redemption, salsa hints at something darker and sadder, and because of this, I like it more. There is pathos in salsa dancing.

We gravitate to the back of the room, stand around by the bar hovering over people’s meals, and observe the dancers. I am most intrigued by the unexpected pairing of an older man, past 65, with a thick, gray mustache and sturdy build, and a young blond woman, in her 20s, wearing a little black strappy dress and the highest of stilettos. He is holding up her left hand with his right, very high in the air, as if poised to wave at someone. He is shorter than she is. Salsa dancing hinges on syncopation and they are moving against the beat, with perfect synchronicity, and although neither is looking directly at the other, they are clearly paying very close attention. No smiles. As they dance, there is a feeling of freedom inside containment, of something powerful bubbling beneath that arm architecture, behind the meticulous, particularized steps. I am thinking also about North American sexuality, Los Angeles sexuality in particular, and the old standard criticism of how sexiness here is confined to youth, and how different it feels to watch this couple dancing together. Here on the dance floor, there is an inherent acknowledgment that every person remains a sexual person their whole life, no matter what, and this fact, through dance, is noted and celebrated. This is my favorite thing about salsa dancing.

We go to the dance floor and the two pros among us rotate through the group so that we can get the hang of it, know how to syncopate the beat. Someone says the trick to salsa is to move your hips like pistons, and I am a bit intimidated by that comment. Pistons? Don’t pistons move up and down? But the band is playing along and the singer is singing and the floor is full of an array of couples: different ages, ethnicities, body types, abilities, and thepeople at the tables are still eating their dinners even though it’s midnight. After a while the floor clears. Hanging on the side wall, I watch as two people remain dancing. The woman keeps dragging her toe along the ground, and she has the smallest feet in her tiny high heel shoes, and I am told that this is the rumba they are doing. They dance slow, and it’s all about dragging and teasing, a dance of almosts, of inhalations and held breath. The two have clearly danced together before, and although they are aware of the audience, it is less for us than it is for them. I like them better than the couple I see taking the center stage at another dance place a few weeks later, who are so slick and together they appear to be ice skating, and if you don’t look at their feet it’s hard to imagine they are not on movable floor plates. They were really good too, but they were dancing for show and spectacle, and this couple here is dancing more for other reasons, something akin to ache. Dragging those tiny high heels, slowly, then pulling away, quick. The diner sitting at the table next to me whispers that the lady dancing this rumba happens to be the actress who killed Selena in the “Selena” movie. I nod, impressed.

Someone in my group orders some fried plantains and we eat a bit and then dance more. When we’re done, we walk through the strip mall where this little club sits, past a sushi bar, a photo shop and, I think, a dentist, and we’re humming along because you can hear the band through the glass windows, all the way to the car.