PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : Learn to Dance, Learn to Dream

High above the corner of Western and 6th avenues, above the drunks in the parking lot, the seedy display of magazines on the newsstand, the Westmor Ballroom stirs in the early morning. It takes up the top floor of what must, in 1928, have been the latest in French Chateau Chic. It is still a long, beautiful room--a faded room of a certain age.

Noise and light are filtered through heavy, opaque windows. Sugar-pink walls are covered in mirrors, reflecting for the moment airiness and emptiness above the springy wooden floor. There is a bandstand framed in painted garlands; imagine, if you will, the musicians who once played here. Men and women have danced in this room for years; something must linger of their spirit, invisible magic of their dreams.

Slowly, figures drift before the mirrors. Bernard from Hawaii in high heels and tight trousers teaching a man in heavy rubber-soled shoes, his wife in long, baggy cardigan. Shyly, timidly, they step through their first waltz for some family party. Bodies held stiffly, heads ducked, the complicity of their awkwardness touches Bernard, who is gentle with them, his young sinuous energy held in check.

Glenn and Mara, the Danish champions, are visiting for a day or two to work with eager couples. They swoop through tangoes, glide through foxtrots, in quest of the unbelievable elegance of the dance, the tiniest movement of an ankle, the exact position of a head. This is not some stardust ballroom with elderly women shuffling past their memories. Dance at Westmor is a sport, an art, a passion.

One couple stand out, their images gliding from mirror to mirror. He is very tall, fair, long-haired, long-legged, skimming the huge floor in patent dance pumps beneath stylish black pants. His partner’s long, thin, perfect hand rests on air, almost as if it would break were she to strain more. Each time her head turns, there is a flurry of deep red curls, bright eyes in vivid makeup--a shining about her. Perhaps the fox-trot queen from Oregon practicing nearby has a more imperious carriage. Perhaps the young, much-praised dancer working with the visiting Danes has a more precise foot placement. Neither dances with the simple delight of this slender, almost theatrical figure, turning and turning in the mirrors to the sound of bygone tunes.

Every now and again, the couple stop and confer earnestly about some detail or other with their teacher, Ricky, an older, wiser, colorless man who has seen glamour come and go. Then it is possible to see the unexpectedness of it all. Stig, a man in his 20s, Danish, a championship dancer once in Europe. His wife, Joanie, in her 50s perhaps, fluid and graceful, leopard-print jump-suit, high dancing pumps, golden jewelry gleaming like Christmas decorations. This is her second marriage. The day after her first husband left, she went out and bought an emerald-green suit. “He had always seen me as subdued and quiet--everything he bought me was gray or brown.” Brown carpet, brown furniture, gray life--the legacy of a marriage. But there were two grown daughters and a lingering dream--that of learning to dance, she who had never danced as a wife.

She went to work and she went to dancing lessons. It was a thawing out; the shy, stiffly held arms unfolded. “You carry it with you”, she says of ballroom dancing. “It’s not just something you do ‘out there.’ It’s a state of grace.” A state of being alive.

She met Stig dancing and they married two years ago. And if he dresses better, so does she. And if he sleeps more comfortably in the Long Beach house from that first marriage, so does she. She lives now with white walls, white carpet, glass and space. The den has been cleared, the furniture stored and they dance together on the parquet floor that used to be brown carpet.

Twice a week they drive up to Western and 6th to take dancing lessons: an hour of smooth with Ricky, an hour of exotic Latin with Bernard. “Investing in yourself,” Joanie calls it.

Even here on the early morning Westmor floor, those who dance are made beautiful by the dance. The short, stocky man, balding and too neat, becomes tall and hawk-like. The slightly older blonde with worn hair loses her apologetic air and turns to the mirror, to the stranger herself.

“Dancing is ageless,” Joanie says. “You’ve got something no one can take away from you. You own it.”

Dreams above a dusty corner.