Dancing (out of step) with the stars

IT actually sounded pretty good on paper: Attend a class given by three-time ballroom dancing world champion Louis van Amstel and his former “Dancing With the Stars” partner, Lisa Rinna, and learn a twirl or two -- nothing too crazy. Wrong. This was more akin to the Bush administration’s postmodern style of interrogation: Not technically torture but excruciating nonetheless and deeply, psychologically scarring.

It began in the worst possible way -- waking up far too early to an internal alarm clock blaring “something is wrong” FM. In this case, that something was my top-left-front tooth -- or what was left of it after an old baseball injury -- which had broken off a jerry-built bridge of bonding material and was hanging between incisors eight and 10 on nothing more than force of habit.

With no time for emergency prosthodontics, I pocketed my tooth and pursed my lips all the way to Anisa’s School of Dance. Decamping in a studio packed with students -- every one a well-heeled woman with dance experience -- I was utterly alone in a crowded room, a human jack-o’-lantern. And so it began.

First was the cha-cha. Running his class like an immersion course, Van Amstel instilled the basic rhythm with hand claps, then launched into teaching by simple demonstration: “Left-two-three cha-cha; right-two-three cha-cha.” Before I could even get the hang of the basic lateral movement, though, he segued into some kind of side-forward-spin-right-left-backward pineapple upside-down cake move. I was flummoxed.

Next up was salsa. I can’t talk about that. I’m still trying to repress it. Rinna, her poofy-lipped smile concealing what I knew to be deep concern, jogged over to my side to offer assistance afterward, but her years of study under the master were no match for the vortex of unmitigated suck-tion I had conjured on the dance floor. Five seconds with me and she was completely out of step, every zig a zag.

Then came disco, for me the dance of death: As Van Amstel began his final routine, the “jive,” I hauled the sweaty carcass of my first foray into ballroom dancing to the sidelines and vainly attempted to re-affix the rogue fang in time for the requisite postgame analysis. No sooner did I open my mouth than a poorly executed F sent it flying across the floor. Finding it just underneath the piano, I stood up to find Rinna approaching me, with a smile to end all smiles.

“Wow,” she said, “You did great!”

-- Liam.Gowing@latimes.com

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CARDIO BALLROOM

WHERE: Anisa’s School of Dance, 14252 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks

WHEN: 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

PRICE: $20 per lesson

INFO: dancingwithlouis.com