Together Again

Swiftly and sensuously, the couples glide in and out of each other's arms, their feet stomping to the blare of music with a strong rhythmic beat. The girls and boys are attractively dressed. And they are holding hands. Has the cha-cha come back? Or is it a funky tango from a '40s movie? Though it looks a bit like both, the step that has restored body contact to dancing is called the Hustle, and at big-city discotheques, from Manhattan's Leviticus to San Francisco's Penthouse, it is causing the biggest swivet on the dance floor since Chubby Checker roared in with the twist in 1960.

What is most striking about the Hustle is that it is graceful--and it is danced, not improvised. After years of the frug, the boogaloo, the monkey and similar "hang-loose" mating rituals consisting of uncoordinated grinds, bounces and St. Vitus-like contortions that had men and women dancing at each other, the Hustle brings back basic steps--elaborations on a tap, 1-2-3,4-5-6 arrangement--and stylized arm movements in which the dancers are partners again. At the B.B.C. (for Bombay Bicycle Club) on Chicago's Near North disco row, Songwriter-Composer Robbin Grand explains: "Before, it wouldn't have mattered if the girl I was dancing with was at a disco a block away. There was no contact. With the Hustle you can be contemporary but close." Adds Harry Felder, 28, one of Leviticus' owners: "If you know the steps, it's a cool, gorgeous, comfortable thing. People are tired of being away from the person they want to be with." Ron Bookman, owner of Los Angeles' New York Experience, agrees: "People want to touch again, and it's a real turn-on for them. I mean, some of our younger dancers have never touched, dancing, you know?"

Disco Sound. Proficiency in the Hustle takes intricate footwork, energy and concentration. There are new variations of the dance every week, as couples add their own spins, dips and breaks, but basically there are two versions: a slow step, somewhat like a samba, only sexier, and an Afro-Latino style known as the Moving Hustle in Los Angeles and the Latin Hustle in New York. The steps are not easy to pick up, and dance studios report booming business. "It's an epidemic," says Cathleen Crawford, manager of Manhattan's Dale Dance Studio, where bookings have tripled in the past three months and the under-30s have appeared for the first time. In the past, Crawford adds, "people just called and said they wanted to learn to dance. Now they know what they want. Everybody wants to learn the Hustle." The dance has also inspired a quasi-fashion of its own: the Hot Look, which runs to high heels, filmy skirts and skimpy halters.

Though New York City's blacks and Puerto Ricans have been doing the Hustle for years, its current vogue among people of all colors and ages has coincided with the explosion of "disco" sound--rhythm and blues with a strong Latin beat. "It's like a status thing," says petite New Yorker Chachi Downs, 25. "If you don't know how to do it, you're out of it." The Hustle's biggest boost nationwide came from Van Me Coy's The Hustle, which has made the national charts for an extraordinary 18 weeks. Other popular Hustle records include Loggins & Messina's Pathway to Glory, Consumer Rapport's Ease On Down the Road (from the Broadway musical The Wiz), Herbie Mann's Hijack and Ester Phillips' What a Difference a Day Makes. None, however, quite matches Me Coy's hit. "Do it," exhorts the record. "Do the Hustle." And they do, they do.

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