So Many Turns, So Little Time

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The New York Sun

Bowling arms, bowling arms,” Hugo Diez says as he chasees across the floor to the music of Jennifer Lopez. And indeed he dips his right arm as if he were tossing a bowling ball, but then brings it back seductively across his chest, shooting himself a smoldering look in the mirror. “I don’t think that’s how we bowl in America,” says the dancer beside me, who looks like she would know. Undeterred, Mr. Diez chasees to the right, bowling with his left arm and slithering his hand back across his body. Then he stops at the end of a musical phrase and pops his front leg gorgeously, like a showgirl, throwing his arms up into a Flamenco pose. “Torero arms! Torero arms!” he calls. “Chin up, like a bullfighter.”


This is Mr. Diez’s Latin dance class, called “Ritmo Latino,” at Equinox fitness clubs, in which he reaches for any metaphor that might successfully translate his Argentine rhythms into the American vernacular. “Walk like a girl, not like a truck driver,” he exhorted, in despair one day, as we were doing the warm-up. “Why do you think we need so many transvestites in New York? You don’t know how to walk like girls!”


Dozens of women and men in fact seek out Mr. Diez four days a week at Equinox clubs strewn around the city to learn how to walk and dance like flashy Latin women – which isn’t that easy, even though Latin dance steps are pretty simple. Everything in salsa is basically a variation on mambo and cha cha – straightforward triple steps that fit the music. What makes Latin dance hard is the technique – all the sexy, tiny isolations in shoulders, rib cage, pelvis, and other movable parts. Plus it’s meant to be arrogant and theatrical – lots of sharp head snaps, dramatic looks, and multiple turns. As a dancer in the class moaned recently: “So many turns, so little time.” But Mr. Diez makes it doable by always teaching the underlying triple step first, showing how to end up on the correct foot without the turns if they become too much. He believes dance should be friendly and nonthreatening, something you do for fun and relaxation.” In Latin culture, dance is all about happiness,” he said.


People take the class for many different reasons, but having a good time seems to be the major one. “I really enjoy it,” said clothing designer Myoung Il Choi, who had never danced before taking the class. “When I started I was truly bad, but now my body feels so much better. I move better, walk better, stand better. I’m lighter, like Hugo.” A classical pianist who also had never danced before said that the class has helped her body learn to relax to the music when she’s performing, rather than remaining stiff and aloof from it.


A surprising number of advanced dancers are sprinkled among the beginners. Kelly Newkirk-Marra, a former professional dancer who started in the business at age 10, says that absolutely anyone can take the class because Mr. Diez makes it so accessible. “He breaks it down so that it’s clear, and puts it all back together while you’re having a good time – sweating and not noticing that you’re working out.”


Mr. Diez, who was a national aerobics champion in Argentina, came to New York in 1996, speaking no English. He was already a well-known international teacher, having team-taught for instructor conventions around the world, including in Japan and Russia, where aerobics is big business. “Teaching instructors is wild,” he says. “They make you feel like a rock star. All that energy – 700 people taking your class, shouting and giving it their all.”


His initial lack of English, though, meant that he had to get New Yorkers to dance using signals, smiles, and whistles, all of which are still part of his repertoire, even though his English is now fluent. But he continues to give little verbal explanation much of the time, encouraging people to let themselves move to the music. “In Latin America, first you dance with your mother when you’re a little boy. She moves, you move. I still tango with my mother, but she leads.”


Tango was his early love, motivating him recently to try teaching a tango routine to his class at Equinox. The music kept changing – which is the other factor that can make Latin dancing difficult – and the students began getting confused. “This is tango,” he said. “It’s danced by men. Do it strong. Don’t worry if you miss a step. Feel it.”


I was reminded of Al Pacino’s advice in “Scent of a Woman:” “Tango is not like life, my dear. There are no mistakes in tango. If you get tangled up, you just tango on.” The music was pulsing as Mr. Diez did a pivot turn into a high kick, followed by a backward chaine turn and a final dramatic pose, palm of the hand to forehead, head flung back up. I didn’t get it all, but like the others, I resolved to tango on.


The New York Sun

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