Lord of a dance

By Brendan Buhler

Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Marcos Questas has danced at the Olympia in Paris, the National Theater in London and Carnegie Hall in New York. He’s opened for Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones.

He also has one of the better job titles going: master tanguero, or, roughly, “tango master.”

(“Tango master” is the sort of title that sounds equally at home in a White House war room or attached to the final foe in a Bruce Lee film.)

There are, by his estimation, probably fewer than 10 master tangueros in the world.

As it happens, Questas lives and teaches in the Las Vegas area.

Questas is a second-generation dancer. His father was an Argentine folk dancer and ran the national ballet’s folk troupe.

“I grew up on tour. The first time I started walking, I was doing rhythm,” he says. By the time he was 6, his father had him performing gaucho dances “with knives and boots and such.”

And the tango?

“My grandfather gave me the tango skill,” Questas says. Not that his grandfather was a professional, merely a skilled aficionado who met Questas’ grandmother while dancing. So when Questas says his life is tango, there’s a certain historical accuracy to his words.

Questas, 40, started touring when he was a teenager and first performed in Las Vegas in 1992, at the Dunes. Soon he was back, performing in “Jubilee!” at Bally’s. In between and all around, he toured and lived in Hollywood, doing some choreography and occasionally acting (bad guys, usually). But he always kept a home in the Vegas area. And two years ago, he stopped touring.

He wanted to start a life with his partner and love, Ruta Maria Jasiukaitis, a native Las Vegan and a former ballet dancer in Cirque du Soleil’s “Mystere.” They’ve started dancing, and teaching, together as Las Vegas Tango.

“She brings something to the community, to the dance that just completes me,” Questas says. “It wouldn’t be Marcos if it wasn’t Ruta.”

There are other dance teachers in town, but Marcos and Ruta are Southern Nevada’s only full-time tango instructors. When they started two years ago, the community of tango dancers was, Questas estimates, 40 people. Now it’s maybe 80 or 90 people.

In Questas’ dreams, there would be hundreds, like in New York City, and he and Ruta would own a magnificent tango studio.

Right now, they teach at their Henderson house and various community centers. He has maybe 60 or 70 students a week — executives, electricians and everyone else — some who fly in from Miami and New York. He also teaches at middle schools and at Sun City Anthem. Students range in age from “14 to ... I don’t know.”

And he keeps his circle of tango students involved in volunteer performances, milongas (sort of like tango cocktail parties) and, once a year, student performances, Questas’ favorite.

Joining in the dancing and the parties are the couple’s two pugs, Bumper, a male, who dances tango between Ruta’s legs for treats and Tova, a female, who merely watches.

“She tells him what to do, like a good woman,” Questas says.