TANGO'S DARK SIDE ILLUMINATED.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Tango is the forbidden fruit of dance, a seductively kinky minuet in which it's never quite clear who's master and who's slave. From its rough origins in the brothels of Buenos Aires, to its later incarnation as a glamorous mating ritual, tango has kept its scent of danger, its allure of decadence.

Milena Plebs wouldn't have it any other way. Tango always has had ``a dark side,'' says the Argentine co-creator of the hit revue ``Tango X 2'' (or ``Tango Para Dos''). Whether sensual and sophisticated, or seamy and vaguely sadomasochistic, tango employs a language of sexual behavior that Plebs insists never goes out of style.

``I think there is a need of the people to know each other and to find themselves through the dance, and the men and the women to find themselves through the dance,'' she says in accented English. ``The roles of the men and the woman are so precise, the man is so masculine, the woman is so feminine. So I think there is a universal need to play those roles.''

In ``Tango X 2,'' Plebs, 36, and her longtime partner and ex-husband Miguel Angel Zotto, 39, get to act out those roles, she in slit skirts and red stilettos, he in slicked hair and rakishly tailored suits.

Joined by three similarly attired couples, they glide through what amounts to a history of the genre, tracing tango's rise from backstreet ritual to glamorous nightclub diversion. All the while, various combinations of dancers interlock legs and bodies, maintaining a certain detached cool even as their couplings grow more intricate and urgent.

``The energy between the two persons flows through the embrace,'' says Plebs. ``The relationship is very intimate, and it's like a conversation of legs.''

Audiences and reviewers worldwide have been drawn into that conversation, as the 9-year-old show has toured throughout North America, Europe and as far away as Hong Kong and Japan. One Boston Globe critic provided an instant marquee mantra, calling ``Tango X 2'' ``the most erotically charged dance performance you'll ever see.''

Proving again that nothing exceeds like excess, the show has spawned a number of imitators. The edge ``Tango X 2'' has over its rivals is the number of different tango styles it illustrates, from the bluntly libidinal to the subtly humorous. Singer Roxana Fontan accompanies the dancers along with a full tango band led by Daniel Binelli, a master of the concertina-like instrument called the bandoneon. Among the show's highlights is a tribute to the music and movies of Carlos Gardel, at one time the world's most famous tango songsmith and later a Paramount matinee idol.

That takes care of glamour. On the flip side, there's a sequence in which a pimp and a prostitute tango around each other while trying to lay claim to a stash of cash.

According to Plebs, tango dancing used to serve as a kind of syncopated foreplay between female prostitutes and their male customers, who were forbidden from dirty dancing with ``respectable'' women. Tango didn't acquire a sheen of respectability until it had been co-opted by middle-class Parisians, then exported back to Argentina.

But a tension still exists between coarseness and slickness, which ``Tango X 2'' seeks to exploit by matching classically trained female dancers with street-schooled male dancers.

``The tango has always had and still has today a dark side, because it started in these poor neighborhoods and the men would dance and maybe would end in fighting,'' Plebs says. ``It has always had this kind of underworld quality.''

THE FACTS

What: ``Tango X 2''

Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $22 to $48. Call [phone].

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Photo

Photo: Milena Plebs and Miguel Angel Zotto, her dance partner and ex-husband, tangle in the highly sensual and stylish ``Tango X 2.''