"One, two, three, four, five" David Caditz calls out as 25 couples tentatively slide cowgirl boots, high heels, tennis shoes and oxfords across the tile floor in the lower level of Carroll Commons.

A boy in his late teens, sporting an attempted beard and mussed hair, breaks down in a fit of giggles as he explains to his partner that after the fourth step he gets mixed up every time. Caditz smiles and puts his hands on the couples' shoulders, counting once again as he walks them through what once was known as the dance of frustrated love.

"I've always wanted to learn to tango," Kat Curtis says eagerly, watching the dancers as she waits for a partner. "To me, it's the most beautiful dance, so gorgeous to watch. ... I don't know how they do it n it's so fast, and a lot of precision to it.

"It's also a very romantic dance."

While Curtis' vision is probably similar to that of most people, tango originated as a dance of sorrow in the brothels of Buenos Aires in the 1880s.

"It was a dance of despair and loneliness," says tango devotee Ashley Oliverio. "The Italians and other immigrants came to Buenos Aires, often just a bunch of men, and they would dance with the prostitutes. It was considered a dance of the lower classes, or worse."

Some say the tango was an acting out of the pimp/prostitute relationship. The dance was considered obscene, with its cheek to cheek embrace, intertwining legs and defiant steps.

The dance eventually made it way into the homes of wealthy Argentineans, many of whom vacationed abroad. They brought a purified version of the tango to Europe in the early 1900s, where it became the dance of the times, and eventually migrated to the United States.

The tango being attempted at Carroll College on Saturday initially seems to have little to do with its passionate roots. Caditz, a Bozeman physicist, initially instructs the 50 or so who want to learn the dance to do four steps solo n one step forward, one step back, once to the left and once to the right n and without music.

"Tango is made up of six steps," he tells his students. "All we are doing is putting together combinations of those six steps to make a dance."

He shows them how they needn't move to each beat of the music, but instead can pause at any time. There is no pattern, like a waltz or two-step; each leader can choreograph his or her unique movements.

Eventually the dancers are paired and begin to cautiously slide in their circles. Some are stiff, others seem to bounce; some stare intently at their feet, while others smile into their partners eyes.

But eventually, they all learn that like the old idiom says, it does, in fact, take two to tango, and are studiously guiding partners around the dance floor.

"It's got that kind of Latin ..." at a loss for the right word, Cedron Jones just rolls his hands in a circle. "It's got some kind of chauvinistic appeal, and we just love to dance."

Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or by e-mail at eve.byron@helenair.com.