THE AMERICAS: Knee-Dip Dance

At Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel one afternoon this week, nearly 1,000 managers and teachers from all over the far-flung Arthur Murray dancing-studio empire gathered to learn a new dance that, vaguely resembles a rumba done in quick time by partners with one game leg apiece. The dance was the merengue, long popular in the Dominican Republic and now a lively candidate for popularity on U.S. dance floors. The merengue (pronounced meh-rew-geh) has already caught on at Manhattan's mambo-mad Palladium, and has begun to spread to less hectic New York dance spots. Says Danceman Murray, currently spending two hours a day practicing merengue steps himself: "I am confident that the merengue will soon become more popular in this country than the mambo."

The Dominican Republic's merengue closely resembles neighboring Haiti's meringue (pronounced like the topping on a lemon pie). In Dominican eyes, the livelier Haitian meringue seems oversexed, while to Haitian ears the Dominicans' merengue seems oversaxed. Both nations claim to have invented the ancestral meringue-merengue, but the true origins are obscure. One oft-told Dominican tale is that the merengue got started when a party of Dominican villagers welcoming home a war hero with a maimed leg sympathetically copied his gimpy style of dancing. The story is supposed to account for the merengue's hip-swinging, bent-knee style.

Ballroom merengue music is played in two-four time, with a strong drum accent on the first beat of every bar. Dancers take a step on each beat, so that the dance looks somewhat like a less dignified version of the Spanish paso doble (bullfighters' march). Basic merengue figures are a graceful two-beat side walk and four-or eight-beat spot turns (see diagram). "It's easy," says Manhattan Dancing Teacher Josephine Butler. "You do a fox trot with one leg and a rumba with the other."