THE ROMANCE OF THE DANCE

It’s opening night at Club Social de Avellaneda, a new tango dance hall in a gritty Buenos Aires blue-collar neighborhood reminiscent of deep Brooklyn. Bronze busts of Juan and Evita Peron grace the entrance of the building. Inside, a giant mural above the dance floor depicts local stevedores, meatpackers and factory workers of a half-century ago. Below the painting, their descendants--burly young men draped in shiny suits, leggy women squeezed into undersized dresses--dart, whirl and glide with remarkable grace to the orchestra music.

A crooner belts out “Barrio de Tango,” evoking the Buenos Aires of their youth: “Dogs baying at the moon, a love affair hidden behind a balcony, and in the distance the sound of an accordion . . . Neighborhood of tango and mystery . . . Old friends whom today I can’t even remember, what has become of them, where have they gone?”

Juan Fabbri, the foremost impresario of the tango, arrives with his entourage about 1:30 a.m., fashionably late for the guest of honor. He is whisked through the kitchen to a large table that has been kept empty near the bandstand. The whole scene--the venue, the fashions, the entrance--reminds me of “GoodFellas,” maybe because the 50-year-old Fabbri--tall, thin, blue-eyed and baby-face handsome--vaguely resembles the film’s star, Ray Liotta.

The music stops abruptly, and the pompadoured master of ceremonies makes a quick introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the godfather of our club, Juan Fabbri, the man who has done more than anybody else to propagate tango in Argentina and abroad!” Fabbri extends his arms to gather in the applause. Then he joins his wife, Dolores, in a nifty duo to lead the audience back on the dance floor. Returning to his table at the end of the number, Fabbri is besieged by admirers and favor-seekers. “Of course, I remember you,” he says, giving each a hug and a kiss, not flubbing a single name.

The world of tango, which encompasses dance, music and poetry, has spread far beyond Argentina. In New York, “Tango Argentino” and “Tango X 2,” two tango revues staged within months of each other, have packed in audiences on Broadway the past two years. Films with tango themes, including 1998’s “Tango,” an Argentine movie nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film, have been playing in cinemas across the globe. Dance studios offering tango lessons have opened even in smaller American towns.

But Buenos Aires is the cradle and mecca of the art form, and it is to this metropolis of nearly 12 million that increasing numbers of tango enthusiasts from the United States and Europe are traveling, some say. The visitors are seeking intensive lessons that will turn them into masters of the dance. They spend their nights in clubs whose settings evoke the smoky sensuality and mystery of the music, the dance, the words. Even for those who may not be fluent in Spanish, there is no better way to savor the real Buenos Aires than through its tango clubs, where the movement and the lyrics give voice to the soul of the city.

My own romance with the tango began almost three decades ago, when I was a young newspaper foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires. I would visit tango clubs once a week to listen to old-time singers and watch new dancers perform. But it’s only been in the past year, at my wife’s urging, that I’ve gotten around to learning to dance the tango. So, after a few months of lessons in a Manhattan dance studio, I gave free rein to my tango obsession during a week in Buenos Aires.

For my guide--why not indulge myself with the best?--I have contacted Juan Fabbri, Mr. Tango himself. Six years ago, nobody had heard of Fabbri. He was a struggling fabric entrepreneur on the verge of bankruptcy. Trying to lift her husband’s spirits, Dolores treated him to tango lessons. Fabbri appreciated the gift but was even more intrigued by what seemed like a great business opportunity. “Tango was on the cusp of a huge revival, and there was nobody out there trying to organize the business,” he says. Today, Fabbri owns Buenos Aires’ two leading tango clubs, Almagro and El Morocco, a tango record-and-CD label and a cable TV station that broadcasts tango dance and music 24 hours daily.

Tango was born in Argentina a century ago, when the country was awash with economically desperate southern European immigrants. In the brothels and bars of Buenos Aires slums, they created a music that blended Mediterranean rhythms. The lyrics--about heartbreak, betrayal, poverty and violence--were drawn from a criminal underworld slang, called lunfardo, that borrowed from regional Spanish and Italian dialects. And the dance, sinuous and sensual, was a slap in the face of conventional society. Tango nowadays has kept its sensuality while shedding its rebelliousness. An evening

at Club Almagro offers ample evidence of how mainstream the dance has become. Almagro is a watering hole for foreign superstars on visits to Argentina. Julio Iglesias can get so carried away here that he has been known to grab the microphone for impromptu renditions of tango classics. Madonna, the Rolling Stones, U2--all have come here for the romance of the dance.

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It’s early on a Tuesday evening at Almagro. On the dance floor, Dolores Fabbri is instructing neophytes of all ages. A former professional flamenco dancer, she embodies feline grace. She wears her thick black hair in a loose shroud over her shoulders. At 45, she has a figure that still looks athletically adolescent.

“Tango is a dance with the legs of a woman,” she says, sweeping an arm over her thighs. “And with the torso of a man,” she adds, running a hand down the chest of a young man with a gymnast’s build who volunteered more quickly than I to be her demonstration partner.

The music begins, and the man, keeping his back ramrod straight, moves in large eight-shaped patterns, called ochos, while Dolores, holding on, sways around him in smaller, faster eight-shapes. “The tango,” she tells us students, “is an act of love that lasts three minutes.”

Most of us display the stiffness of square dancers. Having struggled through my tango lessons in New York, I feel a perverse delight discovering that some Argentines can be just as inept. “Remember, the man conducts, and the woman shines,” Dolores says. It’s an elegant way of saying: He leads, she follows. “I’ve been trying for the last 30 years to get my wife to do just that, and you’re asking me to make it happen in three minutes,” complains a middle-aged businessman who is making no progress.

A few hours after the class, the Almagro’s floor is taken over by the regular clientele, most of them accomplished dancers with the look of tango legends--sexy, ruthless, chic. Dolores provides me a running commentary on their styles. A young couple, with bored aloofness on their faces, display admirably complex and fast footwork as they sweep past our table. “That’s called an academic style--lots of technique, but rather cold and inexpressive,” Dolores says. A silver-haired jowled man and a partner young enough to be his granddaughter sway by us in a simpler, more deliberate milonga style. “Notice how much more feeling they show--how much more they seem to be enjoying themselves,” Dolores says.

Observing the social rules that govern tango is almost as much fun as analyzing the dance techniques. “People come here to practice codes of behavior that have been lost in everyday life,” Juan Fabbri says. Politeness requires dance invitations to be subtle, often no more than a raised eyebrow or a slight nod from across the room. The woman can pretend she has not seen the gesture, and the man can pretend he hasn’t been turned down.

Another tango code is that even if you don’t like your partner’s dancing, you never walk away until the music stops. This interval, called la cortina (“the curtain”), comes after four or five successive tangos, permitting a couple who haven’t met before to retreat to their respective tables without hurting each other’s feelings. But perhaps the most surprising code of all is that dancing the tango--despite the passion and sensuality of arched backs and twined legs--doesn’t obligate partners who are strangers to become friendly or even converse. “It’s considered impolite to speak while dancing the tango,” Dolores says.

I mull over the code, take a deep breath and smile at a tall redhead a few tables away. She springs up from her seat and walks quickly to meet me on the dance floor. I start cautiously, leading her through a few figure-eights. Not bad. In my mind’s eye, my hair is brilliantined and slicked back, my eyelids are half-shut, and my weight has dropped a dozen pounds. We’re dancing cheek-to-cheek, and the woman--a far more skillful dancer--is taking two and three small, rapid steps to each of mine. She’s making me look great. And then, quite suddenly, things go terribly wrong. I step on her once, twice. She stiffens and slows. I bump into other dancers and hear a few muffled curses. When the music ends, my partner turns on her heels and heads back to her table. It’s la cortina for me.

Fabbri introduces me to two Almagro regulars--Sandra, a psychotherapist, and Alejandra, a modern dance teacher--seated at a nearby table. They met a year ago while taking classes at the same dance school and became addicted to tango. Their old friends fell by the wayside. “We stopped having the same interests,” Sandra says. “They still go to the movies, and I have no time.” That’s because four or five nights a week, she and Alejandra visit tango clubs, sometimes accompanied by one or two other girlfriends, and return home close to dawn. “Nothing else could keep me up that late,” Alejandra confides.

A few evenings later, Sandra and Alejandra invite me to Sunderland, a club in a neighborhood that’s barely middle class on the outskirts of the city, far removed from the stardust of Almagro. On weekdays, Sunderland is an indoor basketball court for the local kids. But this is Saturday night, and tango fever is in the air. The nets and backboards are raised; signs advertising nearby car-repair shops and beauty salons hang on the walls. The music, blaring from loudspeakers around the gym, bounces off exposed metal girders on the high ceiling.

For the most part, the crowd here is older and less sophisticated and affluent than the clientele who flock to the downtown clubs. But they are longtime tango loyalists, not recent converts. Many of them are married couples in their 60s and 70s, with feet still nimble enough to elegantly spin torsos grown heavier with age.

Across the room, a man of ample girth and sparse hair is gesturing in our direction, and I tell Alejandra that he seems to want to dance with her. “Gee, thanks,” she says sarcastically as she gets up to meet him on the dance floor. “I was hoping he thought I hadn’t noticed him.”

Apparently, I still have some work to do on my tango codes.

It’s a perfect mismatch on the dance floor: Alejandra moves with graceful indifference and the guy with clumsy passion. Meanwhile, Sandra invites me to dance. This time I dance within my limits--not trying to compete with more expert dancers around me--and enjoy it far more than at Almagro.

As the evening ends, Sandra and Alejandra suggest I interview their dance teacher to hear about some egalitarian notions of how the tango should be danced. Their teacher turns out to be Rodolfo Dinzel. He and wife Gloria took Broadway by storm in the mid-’80s as stars of “Tango Argentino.”

Now in his 60s, Dinzel, a wiry man of middling height with a carefully trimmed mustache, has cut down on performances and spends much of his time giving classes at his two-room dance studio in a tree-shaded, middle-class neighborhood. I notice his students include not only Argentines but other Latin Americans and some Europeans as well. I’m also struck by the range in ages, from pre-adolescents to grandparents. That’s because compared with other popular dances, “the tango is more ample and generous,” Dinzel says. “It doesn’t encourage the cliques you tend to see at a disco.”

The tango requires plenty of study and practice, Dinzel says. Even a well-coordinated individual will need a minimum of two weeks of private classes--a couple of hours a day--before venturing with any sort of confidence onto the floor of a tango club. Alejandra and Sandra say they took a month of lessons before going public. Argentines take the tango seriously. “You will notice that when a couple rises above the median on a dance floor, the others stop and give them space,” Dinzel says. “ ‘Dejalos, Dejalos’ [‘Let them be, let them be’], you will hear people say.”

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Another night, anoth-er tango. It’s almost midnight, but I’m getting used to tango journeys that end near dawn. I follow Fabbri to his snazziest nightclub, El Morocco, meant to evoke the sophisticated, prewar New York club of the same name. Dinner tables on split levels rise away from the dance floor and elevated bandstand. Chandeliers hang from the high ceiling. The walls are painted mauve. More than a magnet for tango enthusiasts, this is a place to preen and be seen.

There are plenty of human props at the tables: famous dancers and singers on their night off, several aging bon vivants in tuxedos raising eyebrows toward younger women hoping for a turn on the dance floor, and assorted other characters of the tango world.

On Fabbri’s advice, I spend a tango evening at places he doesn’t own but strongly recommends. The more famous is Tortoni, a belle-epoque-style cafe as cavernous as a cathedral. Photos of tango luminaries--Carlos Gardel, Anabal Troilo, among many others--are displayed like saints along the walls.

In the adjoining room, a covey of young and old tango enthusiasts takes turns reciting poems. An older gentleman offers an epic he composed about his childhood memories of the death of Carlos Gardel, the greatest tango singer of all time and an Argentine legend. The poet recounts the fatal air crash in Colombia that took Gardel’s life in 1935, and then the minute-by-minute broadcast of the funeral. In between verses, he cries out: “Ay, Carlitos, you sing better every day!” There’s hardly a dry eye in the room.

I invite a particularly lachrymose older man for a brandy at the bar. His name is Paco, and he is a retired government bureaucrat. When I ask about his passion for tango lyrics, he tells me that tango gave his life a profundity he could not find at work or home. “Love, aging, death, riches-to-rags--all the great joys, anxieties, tragedies are taken up by the tango,” Paco says.

Virginia, a TV producer and friend, shows up with her two teenage sons to take me to my next rendezvous, Bar El Chino, currently the hottest spot to hear tango.

Located in Pompeya, a working-class neighborhood, El Chino offers performances only on Friday and Saturday nights. It has a rundown look that draws affluent professionals and businesspeople seeking an authentic tango ambience. Peeling posters of old bullfighters and tango artists decorate the walls. Large, rickety fans spin from the moldy ceiling. Formica-topped tables wobble on the pocked concrete floor. The menu consists mostly of grilled beef, greasy potatoes, overly dressed salads and some modestly priced table wines.

At midnight, Jorge Garcia, the ebullient, hoarse-voiced proprietor, sings the first round of tangos to the accompaniment of a guitar player. He is joined by Inez Arce, who, like Garc 3/8a, appears to be about 70. Blond and wearing pearly baubles over a black satin dress, Arce has an old-style trill to her voice. Her songs, mostly about young women seduced and abandoned, also date to another era. She is followed by two other singers, a strong baritone and a shaky tenor.

El Chino remained anonymous for decades, until a famous Argentine journalist dropped by a few years ago and was immediately smitten by the place. He mentioned the bar at length in several of his social columns and brought his media friends over frequently. It became a preferred spot to shoot commercials for trendy clothing.

Soon, even foreign television crews were filming El Chino to evoke a Buenos Aires that was fast disappearing. Although the performers are older, the audience is mostly under 35, a testament to tango’s nostalgic reach across generations.

I ask Garc 3/8a, the owner, why he offers tango shows only twice a week. He explains that he’s too old to keep the place open until dawn more often. “Who knows how much longer I have left?” he remarks, taking a drag on a cigarette and gulping a glass of wine.

On my last evening in Buenos Aires, I accompany Fabbri to the residence of a European ambassador whose wife has organized a tango night. “He can’t stand the tango,” she says about her spouse. “So I waited for him to go on home leave.” There are other diplomats, dressed in costumes of the 1920s, when the tango was the rage in Europe. A professional dance couple, a father-and-son guitar duo and a woman vocalist take turns performing.

Then the ambassador’s wife, who has furtively signed up for tango lessons, takes the floor with her instructor. Cheek-to-cheek, they sway around the room, she at times leaning her body so sharply that she would collapse on the floor if he made a misstep. Lips parted, eyes closed, she is borracha del tango--”drunk on the tango.”

“It has saved my life,” she says dramatically during a break in the music.

“Amazing, the hold that tango can have on foreigners,” muses Fabbri as the ambassador’s wife and her partner launch into another dance. The other guests stop and give the couple space to dance. And I’m reminded of the words of Dinzel, the former dance star: “Dejalos! Dejalos!” “Let them be! Let them be!”

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Guidebook: Forever Tango in Argentina

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for Argentina is 54, the prefix for Buenos Aires is 11. All prices are approximate and computed at a rate of one peso to the dollar. Room rates are for a double for one night with breakfast, including the 21% tax. Meal prices are for dinner for two, food only.

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Getting there: Direct service from Los Angeles International Airport is available on LanChile. Connecting service is available on American, United, Varig, Mexicana, Avianca and LanChile airlines.

Where to stay: The Marriott Plaza Hotel, telephone (800) 228-9290 or local 4318-3000, fax 4318-3008, https://www.marriott.com. Great shopping location, with decent-sized rooms and a famed bar that draws the local beautiful people. Rate: $360. Even more luxurious and located a dozen blocks away in Recoleta, the poshest residential neighborhood, is the Hotel Alvear Palace, tel. 4808-2100, fax 4804-9246, https://www.alvearpalace.com.ar. Rate: $470. Hotel Bisonte, tel. 4816-5770, fax 4816-5775, e-mail Bisonte@iname.com. A great value, near Buenos Aires’ theater and nightclub district. Rate: $170.

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Where to eat: La Raya, 2566 Ortez d’Ocampo, tel. 4802-5763, fax 4803-9791. Among the best beef restaurants in a city renowned for its carnivorous diet; $44 to $60. Dora, 1016 L.U. Alem, tel. 4311-2891, fax 4784-8177. For Spanish food, especially great garlic chicken, broiled and stewed octopus; $50 to $80. La Brigada, 465 Estados Unidos, tel. 4361-5557. A varied menu of stews, pasta and meats. Best on a Sunday afternoon after visiting the adjacent San Telmo flea market and viewing tango street performances there; $40 to $80.

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Where to tango: Most tango dance clubs are open Tuesdays through Saturdays and charge a minimal admission of $5 to $10 per person. Drinks tend to run about $5, meals $10 to $20 per person. It’s best to arrive after 11 p.m.

Club Almagro, 522 Medrano, tel. 4774-7454, has been the hottest dance hall the last five years. El Morocco, 2048 Corrientes, tel. 4774-7454, is more of a classical supper-dance club but classier. Confiteria Ideal, 384 Suipacha, tel. 4326-0521, and Club Gricel, 1180 La Rioja, tel. 4957-7157, are two other magnets for the cognoscenti. La Trastienda, 460 Balcarce, tel. 4342-7650, is the place to catch new tango acts, both singing and dance. Simple meat and pasta dinners; $40 to $60. Bar El Chino, 3566 Beazley in the Pompeya district, tel. 4911-0215, is the spot of the moment for its authentic environment. Open Friday and Saturday nights only, with grilled-meat and salad dinners; $30 (cash only.) Cafe Tortoni, 825 Avenida de Mayo, tel. 4342-4328, is where you can listen to tango poets and drink excellent coffee and spirits.

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Dance lessons: Prices vary widely according to group or individual instruction and length of courses. Among the most acclaimed instructors: Rodolfo Dinzel, Academia Los Dinzels, Jufre 160, tel. 4777-0405; Dolores Fabbri at Club Almagro and at Estudio “La Esquina,” Avenida de Mayo 784, tel./fax 4343-6440.

For more information: Argentine Government Tourism Office, 5055 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 210, Los Angeles, Calif. 90036; tel. (323) 930-0681, fax (323) 934-9076, https://www.sectour.gov.ar.