Cat In A Topaz Tango

Pool Shark

After lunch break that day at the huge buffet table the hotel provided in the backstage area, Matt returned to his assigned rehearsal room.

It was empty, but Tatyana had been there. Matt winced at seeing his namesake on the rehearsal-room floor, a padded mat.

The rehearsal mat made an oblong pool of bright blue vinyl on the polished maple boards. This afternoon was “lift” practice. The mat reminded him of high school gym classes. Nobody wanted to be reminded of those days of infamy.

He eyed his reflection in the mirrored wall: army-green T-shirt, khaki pants, black lace-up shoes made from leather soft enough to flex like cloth. Jazz shoes, they’d told him. His hair was still spiky from “product” the show’s hairstylists insisted on. It looked a lot blonder because of the portable spray-on-tan booth the contestants had to use religiously every morning.

Its small dark space reminded him of an old-fashioned confessional, if one ever had to take all one’s clothes off to go to confession. It gave the stripped-naked soul a whole new look, not to mention the rhythmic sweep of cold dye as one assumed the position and turned.

If the object was to be reborn looking like a Beach Boy, it had worked.

Matt knew he’d hate this celebrity dancing show and all its works, but everyone, including Temple and his boss at WCOO-FM, hadn’t wanted him to miss this “opportunity.” An opportunity to look like an idiot in front of a local audience. If only the exposure was just local.

Since this was Las Vegas and nothing in Vegas was really “local,” the half-hour Hollywood gossip shows were all over the rehearsals. He never knew who would burst through that closed door besides his drill sergeant, ballet master, and dancing partner, Tatyana Tereshchenko, aka Tatyana the Terrible, five-foot-three inches of wiry and wily Russian tsunami.

She burst in now as if summoned by his thought, wearing a wispy tease of skirt over her lime-green leotard and tights, toting a bag for towel and bottled water.

“Matt-eeeu, Matt-eeeu, Matt-eeeu,” she mispronounced his name in her heavy Russian accent. “Are you ready to lift Tatyana up to the heavens today?”

“It’s just Matt,” he said. No point in correcting her. The long form of his given name was Mathias. “And I’m game for lifts if you are.”

“Of course you are,” she said. Her teaching technique was the whiplash application of carrot-and-stick in rapid alteration. She came close, suddenly kittenish. “Such lovely strong shoulders. Svimming is the most vonderful sport for dancer. Makes long, lovely muscle, all over.”

She accompanied this inciting conclusion with strokes and purrs, her position being that his ex-priest status had made him shy.

With her, a Tasmanian devil would be shy.

“But,” she added, drawing back and pulling herself up like a ballerina on pointe. “You have rhythm and we must pull that out of you before the competition begins, or Tatyana will not vin and one thing is sure: Tatyana will vin. Ca-peach? As they say on, on . . . These Three Sopranos!”

“Capeach,” Matt repeated dutifully, amused by her slaughtering the language and the TV show name, which he took as a deliberate ploy.

In a week of lessons, he’d learned Tatyana was a force of ego. She was the Yorkshire terrier that lived to boss around Great Danes. And she truly had a passion for dance, and for making him into a dancer.

“Good. You learn. With Tatyana you learn to be dancer and love it. So. Today. Surprise.”

He wasn’t surprised when the door opened again and a cameraman backed in, filming the incoming newcomers. Oh, my God! Surprise was right.

In came Ambrosia, his nightly on-air predecessor host at WCOO and his “Midnight Hour” producer, wearing a leopard-print caftan and singing “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man” while banging a jangling circle of wood and metal overhead.

The cameraman kept backing up so far he almost tripped on the floor mat, just before Matt himself leaped forward to steer him around the barrier like a balky dance partner. He’d picked up a move or twelve from the driven diva who was his coach.

The cameraman had backed up so far because Ambrosia was three-hundred-pounds-plus of quivering leopard-skin-pattern caftan, and she was followed by a chorus line of women equally larger than life and as exotically clothed as she, or more so.

They were not shy, that was for sure.

Tatyana was grinning like a demon brat.

“So, Matt-euw. You say as priest you like to visit these gospel music churches. Miz Ambrosiana has brought whole gospel group to rehearsal. You will no longer hide rhythm from those long, hot shoulder muscles and hips, right, Miz Ambrosiana?”

“Right, girlfriend! We all gonna hip-hop today!”

Ambrosia began by bumping hips with him, but not before he could perform an evasive maneuver that kept him on his feet.

“Show us what you learned at dance school today, Beach Boy,” Ambrosia urged.

Matt had heard her selecting songs that soothed and inspired her radio call-in listeners for months now. She was a wonder at massaging sad hearts and sore feelings back into some hope of functioning again. He knew her repertoire, and she knew he’d played the organ a little and liked Bob Dylan.

So they could do a little act for the cameras, which was always what cameras demanded.

“Shall we, Sister Ambrosia?” he said.

“Shall we, Brother Matt?”

“A little Dylan?” he suggested.

“And a lotta rhythm.”

After he led on the first line, she joined in singing the rollicking, feel-good anthem of “When the Ship Comes In” as if rehearsed, while the other women clapped their hands and tambourines and shook their booties and joined in.

They formed a line to march around the room New Orleans funeral style, Matt turning to waltz Ambrosia in a circle, then do-si-do among a few women of the church choir, borrow a tambourine and do a little arms-raised hip-banging with a three-hundred-pound dynamo, then perform a dip with a tall, skinny woman playing the kazoo.

By then the song had segued into “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine” and Matt had circled into the center of the room to sweep Tatyana up into the alternating over-the-hip lifts of the swing dance they’d practiced.

When he let her feet hit floor, she grinned into the camera coming in for a close-up and crowed, “We are gonna be ready to rock with the angels on tonight’s show.”

Wrap and roll.

The cameraman left, happy not to have been steamrolled under, grinning at the great sound and motion he’d recorded.

The churchwomen filed out laughing and gossiping, Ambrosia last.

“Were you surprised to see me?” she asked Matt after he hugged her goodbye at the door.

“I was floored.”

“Did we help?”

He considered. “Sistah, if the church choir can shake it like that, so can I.”

“Right on! Don’t hold back. That’s what you tell our people out there in radioland almost every night, and that’s what we do to show ’em the way.”

“Amen.”

“Now we vork,” came a tight, light voice behind him.

Matt turned around to study his tiny but fierce taskmaster. No one who had heard Ambrosia’s hypnotically soothing voice for years over the airwaves knew she was a woman of size. Now the world would.

If she was willing to “bare all” on TV for him, he guessed he should be willing to reveal a little “rock and roll and rhythm” for her. Besides, he couldn’t let Temple down by looking like a dork.

“Now we work,” he agreed.

Danny Dove regularly dropped by all the rehearsal rooms, being the general overseer as well as chief judge. Matt was glad he came by to help with lifts.

This was Vegas, baby. Dramatic “lifts” might be rarely allowed on Dancing With the Stars, but here they were encouraged.

“You two are made for lift training,” Danny diagnosed. “You Tarzan, she Jane and weighs a hundred pounds tops. Perfect. And you,” he told Matt, “are already at home with slinging a petite woman around.”

“He may be able,” Tatyana said, “but he is blushing! This is the trouble. I need a mate with erotic command.”

“A ‘partner,’ ” Danny corrected her quickly, taking pity on Matt after having picked on him himself. “And you need acrobatic command.”

“Whatever this language means. He must lift me with confidence and skill, and look like he likes it. So far, you would think I was a teacup, when I must be a . . . a kettle.”

“A teakettle,” Danny corrected her again, “a hot Russian samovar, maybe, about to blow its top.”

He turned to Matt. “Once you understand that a female dancer is an athlete who’ll be contributing her own strong spring and control to the moves, you won’t worry about dropping or hurting her. She’s like a cat. If something goes wrong, she can torque her torso to compensate in an instant and make a mistake look like an inspired move. That’s what a talented and gutsy partner does.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dove.” Tatyana folded her arms and regarded Matt with satisfaction.

Matt was unconvinced. “For the show I’ll be dancing with the women competitors. Not to be rude, but a couple of them outweigh me considerably.”

Danny shook his head with the halo of curly cherubic blond hair, but grinned like the devil.

“It’s all in having confidence and learning how to balance the weight. Don’t worry about it.”

Tatyana nodded forcefully. “You have the easy job, Mr. Man, and the upper body strength for it. Just show a little courage and I will show you how lifts make the dance world go round.”

With Danny adjusting their poses, Matt soon realized that his role in lifts was either as stabilizing strongman, turning with Tatyana perched on his shoulders, or human stepladder, providing a steady base while she sprung from the floor into some pose in his arms.

Sweat was streaming off them both, making their handholds slip, when Danny called a break. Matt had actually enjoyed mastering the lifts. He had the strength needed and was quickly developing the balance and skill, even in the turns, which put a lot of pressure on the male partner.

What he couldn’t hack was those hokey face-to-face stares and cheekbone-to-hip caresses in the Latin numbers that made him feel like a flea circus Romeo.

“It feels . . . sexist,” he complained after they ran through their pasodoble moves for Danny.

“That’s because it is,” Danny said cheerfully. “It’s macho to the max, all male peacock pose and sound and fury. And the woman matches every show-off move with her aloof disdain. It is indeed a love-hate dance, and, sadly, it mirrors a lot of relationships still relevant today.”

“So we’re miming a mistake.”

“It’s a cultural thing,” Danny said, laughing, as he corrected their pose at the end of a complicated series of turns. “Latin fireworks. But all dance has truth in it and anger is the dark side of love all too often.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Matt said. “It wouldn’t be if children were reared without pain and fear.”

“True,” said Danny, a flicker wincing across his usually open features. Matt could have kicked himself, pointing that out to a gay. “I always tell myself that in the Latin dances, as often in life, the man may flex and preen, but the woman always wins, and he likes it. Dance as if you know this, and love this, and you will have a Latin soul.”

“We Russians understand this,” Tatyana interjected. “Soul is always, what’s the word? Intense. Extreme. Sexy.”

Of course, Matt understood, that’s exactly what made him uneasy. He’d just have to overcome his upbringing and find some underground spring of Polish passion. Maybe it was . . . freedom.

Suddenly it all came clear to him. Spain and Mexico were Catholic countries. Sexual repression was a historical given. The dances were little dramas of natural attraction versus social constriction. Even the flashy costumes were constricting, especially over the torso and hips. Okay. Call him a nerd, but once he understood the social underpinnings, he could get the emotional and artistic needs.

He just had to play these Latin numbers like John the Baptist tempted by Salome. But the Baptist had been a saint and resisted all the way. Matt would have to let himself be seduced. Live on television. At least his mother in Chicago and the parishioners of St. Stanislavsky’s wouldn’t see this regional show.

“Ready to dance again?” Tatyana demanded.

“Olé,” he said.

The door slammed open. A stagehand’s head frantically eyed all three.

“Anybody here know first aid?”

“Me,” Danny called.

The stagehand jerked his head. “Rehearsal room three.”

They both followed Danny out, drawn by the sudden burst of urgency, the rehearsal forgotten.