There was a sultry red glow inside Teatro Juvarra, a small theater downtown, as the patrons arrived Saturday in their dancing shoes.
It was tango night at this dance hall, and when the music began, the men and women grabbed their partners. Some men closed their eyes. Some women fell limp as their partners held them. Others, in a bold move, wrapped one of their legs around one of their partner’s.
“To dance like this, you have to have it in your blood,” said Christel Glasa, a 56-year-old telecom worker from Turin. “That’s why Americans don’t dance like this. They have cold blood.”
A day earlier, Glasa watched the compulsory portion of the Olympic ice dancing competition on television. The Italian team of Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio finished first. “The Italians won because it’s the same thing as tango,” Glasa said. “It needs the same emotion. Americans don’t have that.“