RHYTHM’S GONNA GET YOU Pulsing music at American Folk Festival draws dancing enthusiast Maria Baeza

Latin dancing, for women, is about following. Grasping lightly his shoulder and hand. Focusing on his rhythm – back and forth. Intuiting his step – left, right, left. Trusting his lead.

Maria Baeza, a 56-year-old therapist with curly, dark hair and coffee-colored skin, says those are the rules.

“I’m assertive. Single. Everything’s on me; it’s all on my back. And I’m fine with it,” she said recently from her office in Bangor. “But when I am on that dance floor, I don’t do anything but follow.”

For Baeza, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and whose roots stretch to Puerto Rico, following a dance partner is more than minding a cultural rule. It’s about learning how to follow on a more spiritual level, learning to respect the way other people operate. It’s how she connects, and in Bangor, during the folk festivals – the National Folk Festival for the past three years and The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront this weekend – she gets fired up about dancing with her community.

“I have one son, and he is forbidden to have his wedding the weekend of the folk festival,” the therapist said, deadpan, then allowing a slight grin. “I’ll say, ‘Go find another mother.’ He’s already gotten notice.”

Her rouged smile widened as she described the laughing, clapping, the music in people’s feet. Does she know her shoulders glide when she gushes?

“It was … awesome. Like, even now, it brings tears to my eyes,” she recalled. “I knew if I could just get one dose of this once a year, I knew I could live here forever.”

This year, Baeza, a member of the American Folk Festival’s board of directors, will make a beeline for performances by Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys and brothers Michael and David Doucet of BeauSoleil fame. Find her grooving to rhythm and blues performer Bettye LaVette.

“Oh, the R&B,” Baeza croons, her eyes closed, one hand over her heart and one hand up, as if she’s about to dance with her leading man.

And spot her turning heads when she and her dance partner, Felix Hernandez of Cherryfield, move to Edwin Ortiz y su Orquesta La Romana. The New York band will provide the Puerto Rican salsa beats for Baeza’s eager, eager feet.

“I’m like dying,” said Baeza, who speaks Spanglish, as much through her hands as through her New York accented voice. “I study the schedule. I’m like, OK, tonight I can see this band at this time, so I’ll see this other band at this time.”

For Baeza, shaking it in the festival’s crowds resonates. Growing up in Brooklyn, whether it was a birthday or a First Communion or an anniversary, celebrations didn’t happen without music and dance. Like heaping bowls of rice and beans, loud music and joyous salsa, merengue and cha cha dancing were sine qua non at family events. Children were raised without self-consciousness to be connected to their parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, through the dance steps.

“My dad was such a beautiful dancer. I just remember feeling so special [to dance with him],” Baeza said.

And then – Dios mio – the most marvelous moment at any gala came when the grandmother, the matriarch, la abuela, was coaxed onto the dance floor.

“It was so special,” Baeza said, beaming. “Grandma could cut up the floor in her own special 80-year-old way.” The relatives would gather around her and call, “Echale, abuelita,” “Get down, grandma!”

But Baeza left Brooklyn, that paradise where she and her gregarious girlfriends and boyfriends used to spend Friday nights practicing their dance steps so they could go out to the clubs – regular and after-hours – on Saturday night and show their stuff.

In Maine, where the folks are a little more – careful, now – reserved, Baeza tells wallflowers to close their eyes and just dance.

“If you don’t, all kinds of tapes will be playing in your head,” she said. “You’ll look around at all the people and what they’re doing, and you’ll say, ‘I can’t do that.’ Don’t think about steps. Just left, right. Left, right. It’s about finding the rhythm and going from there. Move with the music, lean in, bump into people and make friends.”

Baeza, standing in snakeskin sandals revealing bright red toenails, demonstrates the fiesty salsa, the smooth merengue, the playful cha cha. She doesn’t seem worried. She knows Mainers who normally pass by a dance will break their routine at the Folk Festival. Maybe it’s the energetic music that draws the people to their feet. It might be a sense of anonymity a lone couple finds in a crowd of thousands. Those things, yes, but Baeza says it’s something else, too.

“It doesn’t matter whether you know the steps or you don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you move your hips, your arms, your shoulders, your legs. There, everybody’s united. We’re all equal under that sky.”

For information and a full list of performers for The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront, visit www.americanfolkfestival.com. Tracy Collins may be reached at collinstb@gmail.com.