Cancer diagnosis did not end dancing days

DURHAM -- It was hard to talk to Faye Marron on the dance floor. She didn't show up for ballroom dancing to see or be seen. She didn't attend salsa nights to meet men; she was happily married. She came to dance.

It's not that she had two left feet. By many accounts, she was a very good dancer; some say she was great.

She didn't subscribe to the hierarchy that often governs social dance: Beginners stumble with beginners, and those who already know how to dip and twirl don't bother with novices.

If she was empty-handed when the music began, she'd just as soon ask a newbie as she would a professional dance instructor.

"She hated sitting still," said Julie Kase, with whom she traveled out-of-state to swing dance competitions and carpooled to local Latin dance nights.

Even after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, Marron, who didn't smoke, sashayed onto the dance floor as often as she could. Sometimes, treatment left her unable to walk. But when she regained strength, she'd slip on her dancing shoes, black flats ordered specially online. Weekend nights found her at Montas Lounge in Durham; on Thursday evenings, she headed to the Red Room in Raleigh.

This summer, she finally had to change her modus operandi regarding dance partners. She became choosier, selecting only people who understood her situation and would treat her gently on the dance floor.

Faye Zhang Marron died Nov. 2. She rarely divulged her age to anyone, preferring to remain what her husband Steve calls an "age chameleon." What that means is that 50-year-old dance partners would think she was in her 50s, while guys 30 years their junior thought she was around their age.

On salsa night, she regularly rendezvoused with a young Latino, a painter in his early 20s. "Oh, I saw my painter boy last night," she'd tell her husband the next morning.

Marron was born in Beijing and came to the United States in the late 1970s to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she met Steve Marron. They moved to North Carolina several years later, but Faye Marron returned alone to California in the mid-80s to get her master's in electrical engineering. She took up dancing in Berkeley to fill her free time and began learning the finely held postures and delicate footwork of ballroom dance.

She had little time to indulge once her sons were born in 1989 and 1992, but in the mid-90s, she began merging back into the local scene. From time to time, she tried to impart some fancy footwork to her sons, David, 17, and Andrew, 13, but they proved reluctant subjects, as did her husband.

Early on, she tried to persuade him to go with her, but he was never very good. It was hard for him to hear the rhythms of the dance.

"Before long, she noticed that she got to dance a lot more if I wasn't there, so she stopped asking me to come," Steve Marron said.

Bending the rules

In most social dancing, men lead and women follow. At times, that dictum proved challenging when Marron knew more than her partner. But she never tried to wrest control of the dance with a firmly-placed footstep or an out-of-place nudge.

She liked West Coast swing, but she loved ballroom and salsa, the Argentine tango and the hustle, a dance popular in the disco era.

The Triangle dance community maintains distinct circles. Swing doesn't necessarily associate with salsa.

"But Faye was a crossover," said Graham Davis, a fellow dancer who organized an impromptu get-together at the Red Room the night she died. Six friends met to talk a little about Marron but mostly to lose themselves in the music.

Marron didn't want a memorial service or a funeral; she didn't like the thought of people pitying her. But her family decided she would have welcomed a party.

This weekend, her friends and family are gathering to feast on her favorite foods, and there were many. She invented a Chinese-Jamaican chicken dish that blended sweet char siu sauce with jerk seasoning. There will be barbecued salmon and an appetizer of tomato, mozzarella and basil, alongside a cold noodle dish, rice with coconut milk and turmeric and a bowl of guacamole. Pomegranate juice mixed with seltzer water was her favorite drink.

One friend wondered aloud, "Have you thought of having dancing?"

At first, they were unsure, but then they decided it was fitting. Those who feel uncomfortable know not to show up during the hours the gleaming hardwoods in the formal dining room will double as a dance floor.

The same room served as Faye's bedroom once she got very sick. The rented hospital bed is gone now, and the room awaits the click of dancing heels.

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Faye Marron is survived by her husband and two sons.

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