On Thursday, September 5, Firehouse Tango will be at Victor's Maywood Inn, less than a mile from The Knights of Columbus.   The time and schedule is the same as always. The place will change, the price will be lower, and you CANNOT bring wine.

Victor's Maywood Inn

122 W. Pleasant Avenue
Maywood, N.J. 07607-1235
(201) 843-8022

 http://www.maywoodinn.com/

Thursday, September 5

7 - 8 PM :                   Beginner lesson with Fran Chesleigh

8 - 9 PM                     Intermediate Lesson with Fran Chesleigh

9 - 11 PM                   Milonga

Admission is only $10 and includes lessons and milonga.  The Maywood Inn has an excellent menu and bar.  We encourage you to try both.  Please do not bring wine.

For additional information, call Sue at 201-825-1570

DIRECTIONS TO VICTOR'S MAYWOOD INN -

FROM KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS HALL - GOING TOWARDS MAYWOOD AVE

Start going northwest on Grove Avenue towards Elm St to Maywood Avenue.  Make a left on Maywood Avenue. Take the 3rd right onto W Passaic St.  Go .3 miles and turn right onto Lincoln Avenue.  Go .08 miles and turn right onto West Pleasant Avenue. Victor's Maywood Inn is on the right at 122 W Pleasant Avenue (two-way street with a middle divider).

 ROUTE 17, NORTH

Exit at the Passaic Street, Rochelle Park - Maywood Exit. Go right on Passaic Street towards Maywood. Continue on Passaic Street about 5 blocks to Spencer Joseph Way. Make left onto Spencer Joseph Way and proceed to our parking lot on left.

ROUTE 17, SOUTH

Exit onto Route 4, East, and follow directions for Route 4, East.

GARDEN STATE PARKWAY, NORTH

Exit after the Bergen Toll Plaza at Exit 160. Make a right onto Passaic Street (towards Maywood) about 1 1/4 miles, to Spencer Joseph Way. Make left onto Spencer Joseph Way and proceed to our parking lot on left.

GARDEN STATE PARKWAY, SOUTH

Take Exit 163 onto Route 17, South, in Paramus and exit onto Route 4, East, and follow directions for Route 4 East.

ROUTE 4, EAST

Exit in Paramus at Spring Valley Road, Oradell / Maywood Exit. Continue toward Maywood on Spring Valley Road to West Pleasant Avenue. Make a left onto West Pleasant Avenue (two-way street with a middle divider). Victor's Maywood Inn is on the right about 2 1/2 blocks.

ROUTE 4, WEST

Take the Paramus exit. Exit is after the underpass and marked "Bergen Mall Entrance". At the end of the exit make a right onto Forest Avenue. Forest Avenue will turn into Maywood Avenue, continue south on Maywood Avenue to West Pleasant Avenue (at light). Make right onto West Pleasant Avenue (two-way street with a middle divider). Victor's Maywood Inn is on the left about 3 blocks.

ROUTE 80, EAST

Exit 62 to the Garden State Parkway North and follow the directions for the Garden State Parkway, North

ROUTE 80, WEST

Exit 63A to Route 17 North and follow directions for Route 17, North.

Regarding your most recent Tango Tip: Both Feldenkrais and the Alexander Technique actually teach people how to reduce tension in activity, in response to an activity or in learning any skill set.  It is a generalized learning and easily transfers over to tango skills. An Alexander Teacher is not a tango teacher, and most Feldenkris teachers aren't tango teachers, but the skills learned from certified teachers of either skill apply to all activities...especially tango. So one option is also to study Feldenkrais or Alexander. Both can really help.  

-- Daniel Singer

Fran responds: Thanks to Daniel Singer for the above letter. I have had experience with both of these excellent disciplines, and have found that they can be very helpful, as Daniel says, in reducing tension in the body - along with many other benefits. Daniel himself is a fine Alexander teacher, and should be contacted for more information on this valuable technique.

Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Last week, I discussed the idea that upper body tension was one of the principal impediments to an effective lead/follow collaboration. (See this week's "letters to the editor" section for an important addendum by my colleague Daniel Singer.) This week, I want to talk about two elements which generally go hand in hand with tension, and may indeed be, at least in part, the cause of this common problem: confusion and panic .

Dance teachers like to create the illusion that partner dancing is quite easy. Two people form an embrace and have fun moving around a dance floor together in time with a piece of music. Could anything be simpler? Well, it turns out that, yes, pretty much anything at all could be simpler -- brain surgery, beating the stock market, navigating New Jersey traffic during the rush hour ...

You come to the Firehouse because you like the idea of dancing. As a teacher I want you to learn and enjoy dancing. But easy? Fuggedaboudit.

Okay, so you take my dance classes every week. Maybe you also take other teachers' classes. If you're ambitious - and can afford it - you might even have your own private instructor. By this time you're inundated with information about what to do and what not to do. In the ideal, the result of all this input is a comfortable, linear path to learning. But what usually happens, particularly in the first few years, is confusion and panic.

In order to go from ground zero - meaning you know nothing - to even the most rudimentary lead/follow skill level requires a tremendous amount of learning and practice. When you watch the teacher, he or she invariably makes it all look very easy. But when you try it yourself, for a long time it just doesn't work. And even when something positive starts to happen, it's usually very tenuous, and very unrewarding for quite a while. If you couple all this with your own impatience to get past the process of learning as quickly as can so you can just have some fun, you find yourself facing your constant enemies: confusion, panic, tension, and the overwhelming urge to quit.

Confusion, I think, comes from being handed a huge amount of complex information within a short period of time about relearning how to do something you already thought you understood; i.e., walking . Your learned instinct is telling you one thing; your teacher is telling you something completely different. Wouldn't anyone get confused?

Add to this the idea that you're being asked to attempt this very complicated new skill with a person standing in front of you - whom you're being asked to lead or to follow - and you have to do it right now while everybody is watching. What happens? Well, of course, you panic.

Is it any wonder that people get tense during this learning process? And what can you do to feel a little bit better about the whole thing? First of all, stop taking it so seriously. It is, after all, only dancing -- what I like to refer to as "escapist lunacy." Secondly, slow everything down. Don't maintain the unrealistic expectation that the process should be easy, and that there's something wrong with you, if you don't get it all right away. Nobody gets it right away. Finally, don't judge your progress by what you see around you. A lot of people in the Tango community would like you to believe they know what they're doing, when, in fact, they definitely do not. Don't get taken in. Make your learning process your own; decide to work diligently at it until you succeed, don't quit under any circumstances, and try - desperately - to have fun.

Any questions?

Special Note:

My two Saturday classes have been cancelled for the next four weeks to accommodate the fact that most Dance Manhattan students are away on their summer vacations. This means that my 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. slots are open for private lessons. If you'd like to take this unique opportunity to schedule a lesson or two during either of these times, see Pat or me, or contact us at the numbers below.

• Terri Lopez -
  
• Tsipoyra Sartan
  
• steve turi
  
• Stephen Maisch
  
• Jesse Barton
• Mary Epiphan
• Debbie Glaser
  

• Bill Krukovsky
• George Ngo
• Jerry & Adele Kline
  
• Jack Messing
• Horatio Piccioni
• Jean Shedlock
• Enrique Zuniga
• June Stahl
• Francis & Marie
• Eduardo Campos
  
• Terri Lopez