DANCE : Pair’s Passion for Tango Has Universal Appeal

It began one evening on a crowded dance floor in San Diego. Present were Alberto Toledano, a tango enthusiast, and a professional dancer who had learned just enough moves to accompany Toledano in his demanding and rarely seen routine--a tango done in the traditional Argentine style.

Across the room, watching intently, was Loreen Arbus, a Los Angeles television producer. As soon as the duo concluded their turn, she strode across the floor to meet them. By way of introduction, Arbus congratulated Toledano and his partner on their expertise. “As soon as he said, ‘That’s not my partner,’ I said, ‘Do you want a partner?’ ” she recalled. “I didn’t even know his name.”

That was eight years and thousands of hours of practice ago. Today, Arbus and Toledano lead Ritmo Tango, the only U.S. tango dance company. Founded by the pair in 1993, the Los Angeles-based troupe is composed of six dancers (none of them Argentine), two musicians and one singer.

Currently, Ritmo Tango performs Saturday evenings at Luna Park in West Hollywood, where its original four-week engagement has been extended into May. Arbus and Toledano, meanwhile, have parlayed their passion for the dance into international tango renown, touring throughout the United States, Europe and Central and South America.

“Tango is more than just a dance,” said Arbus, former vice president of programming for the Showtime cable network and a niece of photographer Diane Arbus and poet Howard Nemerov. “It’s a mediation where the man and the woman go from two separate entities to becoming one.”

Indeed, for many people, tango, with its dark, overt sensuality and passion, represents the quintessential Latin dance. At the same time, it has been distorted by a host of cliched depictions--of cheek-to-cheek dancers with outstretched arms and roses between their teeth, or of mock dances of violent death.

But the origins of tango are much humbler. Derived from an Argentine dance, the milonga, tango was invented in the late 19th Century by European immigrant workers living on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Because of a dearth of women at the time, men danced with men. It was only when brothels began to proliferate that women began to learn the dance, imbuing it with greater sensuality and using it as a means to entice customers.

Tango might have stayed permanently in the brothels, and subject to the scorn of the Argentine middle and upper classes, had not the dance found its way to Europe in 1913, where it took Paris and then London by storm. It then returned to Argentina legitimized, ready to be embraced by its host nation.

For Arbus and Toledano, their devotion to the dance came after they separately saw “Tango Argentino,” the 1983 show that toured worldwide and rekindled enthusiasm for the dance.

Toledano, who grew up in Morocco and received his doctorate in applied mechanics, said tango captivated him for several reasons--among them, the dance’s merging of emotional unpredictability with geometrical precision, its underlying restraint and the passion of the dancers. Above all, he said, there is for him the intimacy generated between the participants.

“That intimacy and introspection attracted me to the tango, but it also makes it very mysterious,” Toledano said. “It’s an act of communion.”

For Arbus, the enchantment of seeing the dance for the first time was “the most amazing experience of my lifetime.”

Soon afterward, she began taking lessons at Helena’s, a popular Silverlake nightclub of the late 1980s that had a tango night. She didn’t become obsessed with the dance until she saw “Tango Argentino.” Now she and Toledano--who, before moving to Los Angeles, used to drive up from San Diego every week to dance with Arbus--practice at least two hours a day, every day. Since becoming partners, they have also made innumerable trips to Argentina to study with tango masters.

“This is the dance I was born to do,” said Arbus, whose vanity plate on her red Corvette reads “Tango LA.”

Besides performing with Ritmo Tango, whose dancers also include Beverly Durand, Karlo Abouroumieh, Yadira and Cynthia Wraspir, Arbus and Toledano give instruction in tango and have choreographed sequences for TV, film and the theater.

They plan to expand their troupe with several more dancers and to tour more often. Worldwide, said Toledano, tango bespeaks a universal language that transcends its Latin American origins. Countries where the tango is being received with the most acclaim include Belgium, Germany and Japan.

Tango is “something real between a man and a woman, and you respond on a primordial level to the relationship aspect of the dance,” said Arbus. “It’s the dance of the ‘90s.”