If Humphrey Bogart had asked Lauren Becall how to tango rather than how to whistle, she might have replied, “Stand up straight, embrace your partner and walk.”

That’s how Jose Vasquez, a recognized teacher of the Argentine tango, describes the elegant, sometimes intricate, dance that has couples moving to a decidedly different South American beat. While there are many variations to the dance, at its essence, the tango is a walking embrace.

It is luring couples onto dance floors across the country, including a group of Mainers who spend almost every Sunday afternoon working to become more proficient at the basic steps of the tango. About 30 dancers in eastern Maine rotate their sessions from Blue Hill to Trenton to Bangor, bringing an instructor up from Boston once a month to help hone their skills and instruct newcomers.

Ginny Whitaker and John Hackney help coordinate the loosely organized tango club. The over-50 Orono couple discovered the tango three years ago during a trip to Montreal. They’ve been embracing and walking to the strains of tango music ever since.

“It’s very addictive,” says Hackney. “The music is complex and absorbing. You feel completely in the present, almost entranced by what the music does.”

The difference between the Argentine tango and the American ballroom tango, familiar to most Americans, is the dancers’ focus, according to Hackney. In the Argentine tango, the focus is on the space between the two people, while in the ballroom tango, the focus is on who’s watching the dance.

The ballroom version is epitomized by the partners literally dancing cheek to cheek and taking long strides together across the dance floor, before quickly turning to go back the way they came. This dramatic variation on the tango sometimes features the partners passing a long-stemmed red rose back and forth between their teeth.

The Argentine tango is danced to a four-four or two-four beat and has three basic steps – the side step, the forward step and the back step. The direction is relative to the orientation of the upper body. Essential to all variations of the tango, however, are the turns or pivots executed on the ball of the foot. Once beginners learn the basic movements, creativity and improvisation are encouraged unlike in the ballroom version.

That is one of the reasons Nick Robinson of Ellsworth spends his Sunday afternoons dancing. The 30-year-old boat builder says he stumbled into a tango class, his first foray into dancing, in Colorado in 1998, shortly before returning to his home state.

“It’s the best framework for experimentation,” he says of the Argentine tango. “You’re your interpretation of the music through dance. The big difference between the ballroom tango is that it is an eight-count dance where both leader and follower know steps. The structure of the Argentine tango isn’t really metered; it’s much more flexible to interpretation by the dancers.”

In workshops and practice sessions, dancers switch partners often. Robinson says that tangoing with different people helps him learn the dance more thoroughly. It keeps him and his partner from getting into a dancing rut and his leading has become stronger because he’s had to adapt to different partners.

“I really enjoy the connection between partners,” says Robinson. “It’s a really important part of the dance. The tango is a vehicle for interpreting the music and showing someone a good time. It’s endless work and fun. Sometimes, I think I’d give up everything to do it.”

While music historians argue about the exact origins of the tango, it is generally accepted that it is a combination of rhythms from many nations – the relentless beat that the African slaves or candombe beat on their drums called tan-go, the popular music of the pampas called milonga, which combined indigenous rhythms with the music of the early Spanish colonists. Some argue that the word tango comes from the Latin tangere meaning to touch.

There is, however, no argument about where and how the dance developed. Three years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, troops loyal to a rebel army general were tangoing in the streets of Buenos Aires. The brothel was an integral part of the life of the city, according to a history of the dance on the Web site www.planet-tango.com.

The popular dances of the time were being modified to become the foreplay of the sexual encounters taking place at the numerous houses of prostitution lined up along the shores of the Rio de la Plata. In addition to the army, the tango was popular with the thousands of immigrants that streamed into the Argentine capital in the late 1800s.

During the first two decades of the new century, the dance became a worldwide phenomenon taking Paris by storm. The dance of immigrants became a staple of Argentine high society. In America, some ladies wore “bumpers” to protect themselves from rubbing a bit too closely against their male partners. The dance is credited with catapulting Rudolph Valentino, a professional ballroom dancer, to stardom when movies were still silent.

During this period, the tango musician was elevated to professional composer status and the typical tango orchestra created. It consisted of a piano and a double bass, that played the rhythm of the songs, a violin and a bandoneon, an instrument similar to an accordion, to play the melodies along with strong counter melodies and variations.

The popularity of the tango ebbed and flowed in its country of origin, depending on the political and social winds blowing through Argentina. It was out when a military coup took over in 1930, but was embraced wholeheartedly by Juan and Eva Peron in the mid-1940s. Like many dances that required partners to touch each other, the tango fell out of favor as American rock ‘n’ roll dominated the international music scene during the past four decades.

Interest in the Argentine tango was ignited in North America four years ago when Luis Bravo’s touring show “Forever Tango” broke box office records. After running for more than a year on Broadway, the show toured Europe last year.

Tango clubs have popped up across the country in the wake of the dance’s revived popularity, and they are drawing in men and women who learned ballroom dancing as teens as well as young people whose only time on a dance floor has been spent in a mosh pit.

Actor Robert Duvall, whose wife Luciana is Argentine, has spoken passionately about the dance and the music in interviews. The dance will be central to a new film he wrote, directs and stars in. Production on “Tango Assassin” began this spring and its release next year may stir more interest in the Argentine tango.

Whitaker and Hackney say the dance stirred something in them akin to the passion Duvall feels for the dance. The dance also has brought the couple closer emotionally, introduced them to a group of people they might never have known and connected them with tango lovers around the globe. Also, tangoing is fun, maintains Whitaker.

Part of the pleasure of the dance is dressing the part, she says. Whitaker wears flowing dresses and high heels when the couple attend dances and her partner dons a fedora. “We get to slip out of our everyday, ordinary L.L. Bean character,” she adds.

And when dancers surrender to the music leaving themselves behind, they find el alma del tango – the soul of the tango. Then, walking and embracing become second nature.

For more information about learning to tango, call 866-2467 or 288-0304.

TANGO EVENTS SCHEDULE

. June 30: 11 a.m.- 5 p.m., tango workshops; 6:30 p.m., beginners? class; 8 p.m., La Milonga (Tango dance), Thomas School of Dance, Bangor.

. July 1: 11 a.m.- 5 p.m., tango workshops, Thomas School of Dance, Bangor.

. July 8: 3-7 p.m., practice session, Consolidated School, Blue Hill.

. July 15: 3-7 p.m., practice session, Grange Hall, Trenton.

. July 21-22: Tango workshops, times TBA, Town Hall, Blue Hill.