A beautiful scene in a wonderful film. This dance scene brings together a number of the motifs that are braided together to make the film and that also reflect the editing that makes the whole thing work. The two couples suggest Marcello's continued discomfort and impression that homosexuality hounds his existence. The professor and Marcello at the table are contrasted by Oliver and Hardy as an odd couple. And the dancers that will eventually envelop the foursome to make Marcello clearly uncomfortable is also an indication of his psychological sense of imprisonment and more directly and literally the entrapment he feels at wanting to be "normal" like everyone else but not fitting in...no matter what normal might happen to be at any one time.
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This is a great sequence, but I'm not sure it is the editing you should focus on for what makes this work. There are a bunch of questions I'd ask myself first: What's the function of screens (camera placement)? What's the function of high-angle shots? What does choreography contribute? Scenography (L & H photo - which is not simply odd fellow contrast). This is such a complex sequence, carrying through so many themes simultaneously, that saying "editing" sort of flattens the extraordinary use of film rhetoric.
I guess it's not clear but in mentioning the editing it is in relation to the whole film...which was constructed sequentially by Bertolucci and was then edited into the flashback and foward scenes and sequences within sequences that make of it what it is...the editing gives it a much more psychologically loaded work...
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