It Takes <i> at Least </i> Two to Tango

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday, and patrons at the Pasion Supper Club and Restaurant are clearing off the dance floor to make room for Bill Forget and Ruth Dube, who are arguably the oldest local pro tango dancers.

Under a spotlight, their sequined costumes glimmer as the couple dips, twirls and sashays in this routine that Forget, 70, says is the safe sex of the ‘90s.

When Forget and Dube, 62, are finished, Felix Chavez and Shelley Michael perform a tango medley as excited audience members wait impatiently for their turn to tango.

The Pasion Supper Club has put ballroom dancing back on the map. Baby boomers and socialites flock to this Studio City hot spot, where a revival of the old Hollywood supper club scene is unfolding.

The elegant cabaret features dinner and dancing nightly and an atmosphere that attracts those who have long been looking for an upscale environment reminiscent of yesteryear.

“We wanted to create an old-fashioned club that catered to an older crowd,” says owner Allen Adel, who opened the club 10 months ago with his wife, Haleh. “This place lends itself to a dressy night out on the town.”

A typical evening here begins with dinner in the candle-lit restaurant where portobello mushrooms and salmon Rockefeller are favorites.

After dinner, most patrons head for the dance floor, where big band and contemporary music is churned out by a band that plays into the early mornings. On Friday and Saturday nights, the stage is shared with professional tango performers who show audience members just how the dance is done. And on Sundays they do the same with West Coast swing.

There are free Tuesday tango classes, followed by mambo and salsa lessons. And after school, the dance floor is opened up so students can do their homework.

A posh cabaret that attracts the kind of Hollywood in-crowd who once gave supper clubs ambience in the ‘50s, the Pasion draws a good mix of the jet set and upper crust. Robert Duvall has stopped in more than once. Sylvester Stallone’s mom shows up now and again, and Louisa Moritz, who had a small role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and appears in the soon-to-be-released “Terminal Force,” is a regular at the tango and swing lessons.

“This club is very plush and intimate,” says Moritz on a recent tango night. “Besides, they have the best dance floor in Los Angeles.”

The club doesn’t have a dress code, but most patrons come dressed. Men wear suits. Old-timers choose white dinner jackets with bow ties and silk handkerchiefs. The female fashion front ranges from floor-length evening gowns with jeweled purses and flashy accessories to swanky short skirts. Adel says one woman recently came to the Pasion in a fur coat. “That’s something you never see in Southern California,” he says. At least not in nightclubs.

Maurice Schwartzman of Hollywood, who goes to the Pasion with dance partner Sue Connor, says clubs like the Pasion Supper Club are successful because there has been a tango resurgence.

“The music is beautiful,” says Schwartzman, who appeared as a dancer in “Junior” with Arnold Schwarzenegger. “The dance allows you to express every possible human emotion.”

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Where: Pasion Supper Club, 12215 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 752-7333.

When: Tuesday-Thurs., 11 a.m.-midnight; Friday and Saturday, 6:30 p.m.-2 a.m.

Cost: Chicken Pasion, $15.95; portobello mushrooms, $8.95; martini, $6; Budweiser, $3.50.