CULTURE CLUB / It’s the Rio Thing

Dressed to kill, three young women pace the floor. Extending their high heels, they trace a few steps, waiting for the samba band to play. With the first propulsive beat, their hips start to undulate and the temperature in the room begins a slow, nightlong ascent. There are hundreds of clubs like this in Rio, but this is West L.A.’s venerable folk-dance club, Cafe Danssa. Tucked away on an anonymous stretch of Pico Boulevard, the cafe was long the hub for a thriving Israeli folk-dance scene, but now it is the weekend home of Brazilian samba culture.

A decidedly modest space, the club nevertheless exudes ambience. In the darkly lit main room, the walls and ceiling are festooned with banners (“Fly to Brazil,” “Carnival in Rio ‘97”) and a desert mural that evokes distant worlds. A handful of booths with Formica tables accommodates those indulging in Brazilian pies or sipping Guarana Antarctica, “the taste of the rain forests.”

Up on the makeshift stage is the Constellation Band, which plays every Saturday night to a packed crowd that includes a sizable contingent of Brazilians. The six-member group sticks mostly to pagoge, a slower samba described as “music from the backyard” by Ed Piazza, an architect by day and the Constellation Band’s only non-Brazilian. (Friday nights feature the much larger M.I.L.A., a boisterous percussion ensemble that serves up the parade music of Carnival.) With its languid rhythms, pagoge lends itself to couple dancing, but so far tonight, only women fill the floor. A cluster of young men sits and stares. Finally, an incongruous duo--he in baggy jeans and tennis shoes, she in short black mini and white lace blouse--locks arms and torsos. Two more couples join them.

“This is the closest thing in the U.S. to Rio,” explains pandeiro (tambourine) player Flavio Ribeiro, who also is bandmaster of Cafe Danssa’s Friday night samba school. When the musicians resume, they draw some of the previously catatonic men from their seats. Propelled by the deep, insistent beat of the surdo (bass drum), their movements are tentative; the women still dominate, dancing with assured abandon.

A few minutes later, the Bikini Dance--a weekend institution--starts up. As the crowd forms a circle, two women adorned in glittering gold bikinis trade gyrating solos to an intensified samba rhythm. One man joins in, then another, the crowd cheering them on. When the Bikini Dance ends, more couples converge on the dance floor. A man glides his partner across the room and they press against the wall. The mood has turned intimate, erotic. The band breaks into the parade samba, usually reserved for Fridays, inspiring a stampede-like frenzy. But tonight is pagoge night, and the musicians bring the crowd back to earth with a plaintive Portuguese ballad. Seduction is in the air.