By LARRY ROHTER

The Latin dance scene in New York is a moveable feast that offers fans the possibility of stepping out seven nights a week.

The number of places featuring Latin dance seems only to be growing, and includes such seemingly unlikely locations as the Taj Lounge, an Indian restaurant on West 21st Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan (Mondays); B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill near Times Square (Thursdays); and Water Taxi Beach at the South Street Seaport (Fridays).

Then there’s the summertime outdoor Sunset Salsa series, held every Thursday on the traffic island on Ninth Avenue at the north side of 14th Street in Manhattan . “Anybody can try it,” said Talia Castro-Pozo, the chief instructor. “Just look around and you’ll see: there are not just Latinos here, but people of all ages and ethnicities and backgrounds and levels of experience, all of them dancing happily with each other.

” The dominant Latin dance style at most of these events, of course, is salsa and its cousins from the Caribbean, which include merengue, cha-cha, bachata, mambo and rumba. But Argentine tango and Brazilian samba also have their followings and gathering spots .

The salsa dance scene is divided between “parties,” which generally take place in nightclubs, restaurants and bars like S.O.B.’s in the South Village on Friday or the Iguana on West 54th Street, and “socials,” which are held in dance studios. “ Socials are for people who want to dance, not to drink,” said Steve Shaw, co-founder of SalsaNewYork. com .

“ The clubs see them not drinking, and the managers want that income and feel that they can’t get enough people drinking. So one solution is the dance studio, where people can go to dance, and there are drinks, but they are not alcoholic.” Of the socials, the oldest and probably the most popular is the one held by Jimmy Anton, a veteran dance instructor.

It takes place in Chelsea two Sunday evenings a month . The advantage of nightclubs and restaurants, even for those not at all interested in drinking, is that many of them offer free dance lessons as a lure .

Some clubs are clearly not for beginners. The Thursday night Salsa Party at Club Cache, just off Broadway in Manhattan’s Theater District, offers the usual free lesson, but the floor is soon crowded with dancers eager to show just how good they are. Cache attracts a lot of dance instructors looking for a place to kick back after work, as well as dedicated salseros either visiting from out of town or who have moved to New York to live a salsa lifestyle.

The Uptown Salsa Wednesday sessions at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center in East Harlem, on the other hand, offer a disarmingly hospitable environment. The crowd is older and predominantly Latino, the show starts at 5:30 p.m. and ends around 11, and nobody seems to feel a need to show off newly acquired skills. For samba, there is S.O.B.’s, which features Brazilian music most Saturday nights, and the Nublu club in the East Village, most Wednesdays.

There are also Wednesday samba boat cruises . For tango, a good place to start is at the 92nd Street Y, which sponsors an Argentine Tango Party on the first Saturday of every month. “Every day there are two or three places where you can dance tango in New York,” said Karina Romero, who conducts the Y’s program : “There are studios, restaurants and clubs. This city has become almost like Buenos Aires.”