RIVER CITY JOURNAL: AS DREAMS GO, THE TANGO ISN'T ALL THAT BAD

Watching movies has made me a closet dancer, but it takes a pretty fancy step to come out in the spotlight's glare.

Everything I know about dancing I learned by watching movies. And if I have learned anything, it is that I should have been born in Greece. Or Argentina.

Dancing in other parts of the world -- from what I've seen in the movies -- is an ingrained part of a national cultural heritage. In other countries, you grow up knowing how to dance. Remember Zorba? Watching that movie convinced me that men ought to be able to express every emotion imaginable by swaying and moving their feet in rhythm.

And remember when the English schoolteacher showed the king of Siam how to waltz? Good grief, I thought to myself. Any klutz can do that.

My passion, however, is the tango. Who has not, at one time or another, fallen under the spell of that passionate dance? That's why I enjoyed "Scent of a Woman" so much. If Al Pacino, playing a blind man, can do it, so can I.

My favorite scene in "Il Postino" is when the great poet Pablo Naruda -- no svelte athlete, if you know what I mean -- takes his wife into his arms while the windup phonograph plays a Chilean tango. Mesmerizing.

And then there is "Evita," the poor major motion picture that was snubbed this year by the Oscar folks. I loved that picture. Not for the story. Not so much for the singing, although I thought Madonna was superb. I liked it because the fabric of the movie was stitched together by a dreamlike tango. Wow! How two bodies can move together without causing serious injury.

Of course, the sad truth is that you can't learn to dance by watching the movies. Oh, sure, I've heard stories about immigrants coming to America and learning to speak passable English by watching television. I remember one such fellow who showed me a new shirt he had just purchased. "How much?" I asked. "Fourteen ninety-nine WHILE SUPPLIES LAST," he replied.

My wife, who will read this with her bagel and coffee this morning along with the rest of you, will be both amused and befuddled. She has been trying to get me to dance for more than 30 years. She has taken my steadfast refusals to mean I don't want to dance. Plainly speaking, dear, I don't know how.

She, on the other hand, has a natural ability to move and sway with whatever music is playing so that she appears to be dancing. Quite well, I might add. But she too has confessed to a lack of knowledge about REAL dancing. You know, the fox trot. The waltz.

And the tango.

We tried to do something about this a couple of years ago when we signed up for beginners' lessons offered by the vo-tech school. We knew several of the couples who enrolled, and we met several more couples, so the Monday night classes were as much a social event as a learning experiment.

Everyone had a good time. I think some folks actually learned to dance. All I learned was that I don't know how to dance unless the instructor is yelling over the music: "Ready? One-two-three... ."

Besides that, the only way I can tell a fox trot is if the band plays the same piece the instructor used on her tape player. That doesn't happen a lot.

We all have dreams and ambitions. Some of you want to be rich and famous. Some of you want to be successful in business. Some of you want to be remembered for making a difference.

God bless you all.

And while you're at it, God, help me with the tango.

I am looking forward to the day our sons get married. I hope they have big receptions. I hope the bride's parents shell out for a really good band. My dream is to dance with my wife in public. And with the bride. And with my mother. I have never danced with my mother. I think that would be lovely.

And we'll all do the tango. If a blind man can teach a young woman to tango on the spot, surely a bunch of happy wedding guests can figure it out.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.