Mambo Peligroso

First Chapter

Chapter One

Catalina

In order to get asked to dance
you have to already be dancing.

The Copacabana of the nineties, located on Fifty-seventh Street between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues, was designed to dazzle, with its carpeted ramp spiraling down to steps that led to the main dance floor, pink neon palm trees over the bandstand, and over that, the sun or moon and stars or fireworks blazing up at appropriate moments in the music. There was a banquet table draped in white linen that served as an extra bar, and long-legged cigarette girls hawking their wares, which gave it the spice of the old-time clubs. Movie stars were occasionally seen there, along with the regulars, who were just as beautiful if not more so than the stars: young wolves, working girls dressed to kill, divorcés and divorcées looking for easy fun, and of course the die-hard mamberos and mamberas, including teachers and their followings and a sprinkling of oldtimers from the Palladium.

If you walked through the swinging double doors behind the bar, you came to a more intimate room upholstered in crimson velvet. Early in the evening this was where you saw hustle at its Latin finest, in its way just as mesmerizing as mambo on the main floor. Many dancers split their time between the two rooms, the dreamy continuous pulse of disco providing the perfect counterpoint to the syncopated stop-and-start of salsa. Around midnight they dimmed the lights in the back room and put on Latin house, and became strictly a pickup joint.

Catalina's first time at the Copa was a Friday night in March of 1997. Her image of the legendary club had been ceiling fans, people sitting around in rattan armchairs sipping tropical drinks: languid tanned women in jungle-print dresses and men in white suits and panamas. But after checking her coat she looked around and saw that there was not a jungle-printed woman or Panama-hatted man to be seen. She got herself a paper plate of complimentary rice and beans from the buffet in the back room and ate by herself standing up at the bar. Afterward she went back out to the main floor and hovered by the railing on the ramp until she spotted someone she knew—her dance teacher's assistant. Among the sequined dresses and Armani pantsuits Wendy Cardoza stood out like a hip scarecrow in her black velvet T-shirt and matching leggings. She was dancing with a slender man with a mane of dark hair. Catalina watched Wendy's ponytail snapping around on the spins, the way she dropped down into a lunge and slid back up on the next beat, how purely flexible she was, as if she had no bones. Her partner had beautiful hands, a soft and precise lead. As soon as the set was over, Catalina waved, but Wendy didn't see because at the same instant another man grabbed her and began leading her into triple turns.

From where Catalina was standing the dancers looked like molecules, spinning and almost bumping and rearranging themselves into new configurations after each song. The man with whom Wendy was now dancing turned out to be Carlos from their class, whom Catalina hadn't recognized at first with his hair slicked back. Wendy was easily fifteen years his senior but he was working her hard -- there was the lunge again, obviously a trademark.

The set finally ended, and Catalina leaned over the railing and again waved wildly in Wendy's direction. This time both Wendy and Carlos saw her and blew kisses. While Wendy got nabbed by another partner, Carlos walked over to the floor underneath where Catalina was standing and held out his arms in an extravagant gesture as if he were about to serenade her.

"Why are you hiding up there?"

"It's my first time."

"A Copa virgin. Then you have to dance with me."

She had to start somewhere. She came around and met him on the steps, and he took her hand and led her out to a spot on the edge.

Nobody ever forgets their first moment on the floor of the Copacabana.

With their first cross-body lead he carved out a niche.

Mambo in New York is horizontal. The more crowded the floor, the smaller and tighter the slot.

Cross-body into a single right turn. The floor was so slippery that most of her energy went into keeping her balance and braking coming out of the turns.

"Me encanta tus vueltas."

"What?"

"Your spins are great."

How nerve-racking it was, dancing at the edge of the floor, with all the people at the tables and lining the rail ogling them. Carlos compensated for the encroaching crowd and the slickness of the floor by maintaining a firm grip and keeping her close. Because he could feel that she was nervous he didn't try anything tricky.

The music was Cuban, a song Catalina recognized but at first couldn't name. As she would later learn, the DJ at the Copa on Friday nights was Henry Knowles, a famously creative mixer, blending contemporary stars like Ray Ruiz, Los Adolescentes, and Gilberto Santa Rosa with old-timers like Celia Cruz and Cheo Feliciano so smoothly you couldn't hear the segue unless you were listening for it.

In that set he was juxtaposing Vocal Sampling's funky a cappella cover of "La Negra Tomasa" with Rubén González's shimmery piano descarga. He ended with the version by Beny Moré.

Kikiriboom mandiga
Kikiriboom mandiga.

When the set was over, Carlos picked up Catalina's hand and kissed it.

That dance, it seemed, was the seal of approval, because from then on she had no trouble getting partners, the most memorable an older man with a diamond tiepin and a red carnation in his lapel. But she was still a beginner, after all, with only a month of classes behind her, and it seemed every guy was on a different beat ...