Six strangers gathered in a dark bar to pair off, touch each other’s sweating bodies – first nervously, then with more confidence – while a more experienced woman critiqued their techniques.
It was not a “bunga bunga” party organized by Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
It was the introductory two-step class Wednesday night at Wild Horse Saloon, one of the many ways we dance in Durango.
Whereas in New York City money talks, in Durango, the human body enjoys undisputed social primacy. We use it to ski, hike and bicycle, stuff it with organic food and drown it in locally brewed beers, all for the sake of its improvement and joy.
But while the Durango City Council holds forth on bicycle paths and restaurants tout the benefits of eating local, few official bodies promote dance.
They don’t have to: Dance is everywhere, in every form, at every level of expertise.
There are more than six independent dance studios in Durango, where residents go to hone their ballet, work out or prepare for the first dance at their children’s upcoming weddings.
At the least formal end of the spectrum, every weekend, the young and pulsating take to the dance floor at The Summit, bopping their heads and rhythmically shaking their appendages, mimicking how they might like to move later, in the privacy of their bedrooms.
But in Durango, sodden mating rituals represent the tip of the dance iceberg.
Every Thursday night, salsa takes over Moe’s on Main Avenue, where Rolando Lopez gives free lessons.
Expert dance instructor Leslie Carlson teaches introductory two-step and West Coast swing classes at the Wild Horse Saloon at College Drive and East Second Avenue every Wednesday and Thursday.
Durango Dance, 1120 Main Ave., offers classes to adults and children throughout the day, in a range of dances. Owner Kristen Brewer Sitter personally teaches more than 100 students a week.
“For the adults, it’s a great way to connect with other adults in a really healthy and positive way,” Brewer said. “As you move together, you’re listening to great music, you’re exercising. Some perform at the end of the year – which is a really great goal.
“For the kids, mainly it’s the joy,” she said. “For the little ones, the first dance class is their first group setting, and they learn how to interact with each other, how to stand in line – just the basics.”
At the formal end of things, Francis Rosser Taylor’s studio, Ballet Durango, also at 1120 Main Ave., promises a trained focus on ballet, perhaps the most technically rigorous form of dance. Taylor said she had spent her entire life as a teacher “sticking up for high standards.”
While Taylor said her uncompromising attitude toward form had produced professional-level ballerinas, she said that with a little hard work and an open heart, anyone, no matter their skill level or age, could access ballet.
“Not everybody has to aspire to the New York City ballet, where you have to weigh in under 100 pounds. People look at ‘Black Swan’ and all the competition – that’s one aspect of that world,” she said. “But that’s not what ballet is about. It trains the body to move in a very artistic way. Ballet dancers are athletes.”
Taylor said her adult students were attracted to ballet “because they appreciate the art form.”
“They enjoy the control you get, the musicality and the difficulty of ballet – how hard it is just to learn the basic stuff,” she said.
Also on the high end of the skill spectrum is Durango’s Dance in the Rockies, a studio with 194 students and nine faculty members. It fields a competitive dance team in addition to hosting hip-hop, jazz and tap classes.
“We are Durango’s only elite competitive team, the highest level of competition, and we are proud of our reputation,” owner Angela Gillis said. “There’s a perception that if you go to a big audition at a college, for instance, you’re disadvantaged by learning how to dance in a small town. That’s not true here.”
Gillis said the number of young men dancing competitively had increased threefold in the last 10 years because of shifting perceptions of dance.
“Dance has just really taken a turn toward the more contemporary route: You have to be muscular, not a waif,” she said. “Most professional dancers have rippling muscles; the days of those little-waist prima ballerinas are over. It’s totally different than it used to be, for sure.”
But Gillis said while dedicated ballet students could leave her program ready for New York, the real explosion in dance has been among young men and adults of all shapes.
“We’ve had a bit of a boom in the adult recreational market,” she said. “It’s true for probably the last 10 years – beginning and intermediate adult dance has really taken off.”
According to recent research, the benefits of dance for adults are startling. One 21-year study of senior citizens published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which was led by Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, tested the correlation between various activities and rates of dementia.
It found that reading reduced the risk of dementia by 25 percent; bicycling and swimming, 0 percent; doing a crossword at least 4 days a week, 47 percent; golf, 0 percent.
Frequent dancing produced a staggering 76 percent reduction in risk for dementia.
The intellectual demands of dancing were clear last week at Carlson’s Wednesday dance class at the Wild Horse Saloon, where college educations didn’t help with remembering to count the beats, squeeze one’s buttocks, keep one’s arms in the optimal half-crescent and not step on one’s partner’s feet.
One aspect of why so many people are learning to dance in Durango also became clear: We have excellent teachers.
Carlson studied under Arthur Murray at his New Orleans studio for nine years. Now she teaches every form of dance, in big classes and in private lessons.
Carlson’s training is obvious: her eyes see every flaw, and her criticisms are pointed, but her unfussy demeanor and wicked sense of humor moderate their blow.
At her introductory two-step class, she told a reporter to “put on the high beams” – code for a woman correcting her posture by thrusting out her chest.
When the reporter grabbed her partner’s hand as he spun her, Carlson dryly observed it looked more like “a self-defense move than a lady’s dance move.”
“I tell this to couples all the time: You have to give him the finger,” she said.
Carlson’s view of dance may be elitist, but her philosophy is human, encompassing and forgiving.
“We all have rhythm because we all have a heartbeat,” she said. “My theory is, at heart, we’re all learners. We’re taught how to drive, we’re taught to play ball, we’re used to being coached. In primitive cultures, you just dance – children emulated the adults.
“Dance is still in all of our brains, but in our more civilized culture, sometimes people just need to be taught how to move,” she said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
UPDATE Sept. 11, 2013: Durango’s Bella Dance Studio said it also fields a competitive dance team. Its dance company has 42 members who participate in nine different competitive teams. In the story, Angela Gillis, owner of Dance in the Rockies, was quoted as saying her studio has the only competitive team in Durango.
