Firehouse Tango Halloween Milonga A Huge Success - November at Firehouse

Published: Fri, 11/01/13

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October 31, 2013 Newsletter

Halloween milonga a huge success



 

The spooky  atmosphere

 

Tanghosts and tangoblins galore arrived in full regalia.  DJ Sue played creepy Halloween cortinas; candles flickered;  and a sinister witch smelling of beer peered eerily from the back of the bar.

 

The parade

 

What an extraordinary grouping of creatures they were; this cadre of very sexy, scary, funny and beautiful Firehouse tangueros parading around the line of dance; trying like mad to attract the attention of the judges!  

 

The winners

 

After intense negotiations, and what looked to me like a friendly argument, judges Terri Lopez, Horatio Piccioni, and Adrienne Burton finally announced their decision.  I sure didn't envy them the difficult task of selecting the best of the many outstanding costumes. 

Winners Emeritus who have withdrawn from competition because they won too many times - Faye and Lou Levine and Adrienne Burton.  Rafael and Hilda also placed themselves out of the competition. 


Most Creative - Simon K. - Boxer - complete with swollen jaw and black ey

  

Funniest - Steve Turi - Devil with horns

 

Best Couple - Elisa and Frank - Pope and angel - you had to be there.

 

Sexiest - Barbara - Pocahontas

 

 

 

The Door prizes

 

I forgot to bring the prizes and made up for that by forgetting to give out the tickets at the door.  We will have door prizes next week.  

 

The Belly Dancers

 

The enthusiastic crowd was treated to a spectacular display of belly dancing proficiency. Debbie Glaser and Brenda Gaines performed completely different, but equally spectacular routines.  To say that we were in awe of these two talented ladies would be understating our reaction. We are looking forward to a repeat performance very soon. 

 


 


Did you take the wrong jacket?

 

If you took a tan man's jacket and it's the wrong color and doesn't quite fit, you have Lou's jacket and I have yours.  Please e mail me at firehousetango@gmail.com, and we can make everything right next week.  Lou will be very happy to have his jacket back. 

Progress (and lack of it) with my resolutions in October

 

Summer is gone,  we're barreling through 2013.  Progress with my resolutions is mixed, but still, I keep trying.  These were my resolutions for this year.

·        Learn to converse fluently en español by studying every day

·         Exercise 6 days a week

·         Keep this newsletter interesting for my readers.

 

Exercise - Thumbs down!

Every month I update my readers on the progress of my New Year's resolutions.  I was great again this year until March's Buenos Aires vacation, where I blew it big time.  It's no great surprise that, in spite of my good intentions, October's trip was an exercise disaster.  I'm now back on track, exercising every day.

Buenos Aires - yes!

Two trips to Buenos Aires in a year is all my poor tootsies can stand.  I'm really happy though, and both trips were as good as it gets. 

  Espanol - yes!

Buenos Aires and a class in conversational Spanish at William Paterson have done wonders for mi español.  Most of all, though, I must thank my Spanish speaking Firehouse friends, who refuse to give up on me. 


Hilda reads and corrects my homework every week and makes herself available to speak to me as much as possible.  Rafael immerses me in true idiomatic Spanish and tells me to "habla, just habla - Don't worry about the grammar."  Horacio went out of his way to allow me to interview him about his background in Argentina.  Georgina, of course, continues to habla conmigo at Firehouse.  Veronica conducts terrific conversation sessions, which I try hard to attend.  I must also give credit to my poor husband for putting up with me.


Gracias a todos mis amigos españoles.  
 

 
Newsletter

As anyone who knows me realizes, brevity is not my strong suit.  I do try, but there's always so much to say.   

 

 
In conclusion

Yes, I am just a bit obsessive compulsive - but sometimes that helps get things done.

 

November at Firehouse



November 7

No celebrations November 7th, just lessons, dancing, food, and socializing with some of the nicest folks around.

 

November 14 - Celebrate Sue and Joe's 25th anniversary with us

 

Joe and I have been married for twenty-five years, and I can't think of a better way to mark this event than to share a celebratory tango with our dear Firehouse friends - the more of them the better.  Please join us on Thursday,  November 14th for this joyful event.  What woman of my age - indeed any age - would not be excited about a long line of tangueros waiting just to dance with her?  Joe is equally excited to tango with the ladies. 


 Our old friend Gretchen Janssen, who left us for the west coast a few years ago, will join us just in time for this celebration.

 

 

 November 21st - Anniversary of Walter Monteblanco and and Gay Fallows Monteblanco


Their actual anniversary was September 5, but with the Monteblancos' busy schedule, we're just now getting around to celebrating. 

Can it be four years since we rejoiced at the marriage of our very good friends Walter and Gay?  We will celebrate their anniversary with great joy - the tangueros dancing with Gay and the tangueras with Walter.  I can't wait. 

Walter has been a close friend and supporter since the very beginning at Paramus Firehouse # 4, and Gay came soon after.  When they aren't traveling, they come to Firehouse often.  Walter also teaches private lessons by appointment. 


 November 28th - Thanksgiving day - no Firehouse Milonga


Firehouse Tango will be closed on Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, November 28th.  We hope you'll enjoy the day with your family, as we all will - and, of course, we'll look forward to seeing you on the following Thursday evening, November 29.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 


Celebrations




If heaven is anything like celebrating one's birthday at Firehouse Tango, it has a lot to recommend it. Frankly, I'd rather be at Firehouse. Thank you lovely tangueras, for a birthday memory I shall cherish. Con mucho amore,

Steve Turi

I keep saying I do not want to celebrate any more birthdays, but how many men will line up to dance with me, if not for the traditional tributes on birthdays.....oh well, you know that is not really true because our tanqueros dance with all of the ladies...

Terri Lopez



Save the date


 

From Mike Porro - Tango Loco IV November 30th in Midland Park


We'll be hosting as Tango Loco IV on November 30th at Grand Ballroom another After Thanksgiving Milonga & Auction to raise money for our local food banks.  We raised $2,370 last year and decided that this would be a great tradition to continue.  We'll fill in the particulars over the next several weeks, but want to get a SAVE THE DATE notice out now in order to avoid conflicts with other activities that could be scheduled on this date.


For more information, e mail Mike Porro at porro@erols.com

 



Reader's Corner 

We welcome readers' contributions about Argentine Tango in general and Firehouse Tango in particular. Send your thoughts to firehousetango@gmail.comWe welcome readers' contributions about Argentine Tango in general and Firehouse Tango in particular. Send your thoughts to firehousetango@gmail.com

From Debbie Glaser

 
Hola mi amiga, I have an idea for Firehouse . What do you think about gift certificates to Firehouse for people to buy during the holidays? Sometimes I pay for a person's entrance to FH as a birthday gift or to thank them for a favor.  See you tomorrow. Blessings,Debbie

Note from Sue - Please let me know if anyone has any thoughts about this.
Tango Tip of the week

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Recently, a student of mine asked me about people bumping into one another on the dance floor. She was interested in problems that occur with international competitive dancing. In answering her, it occurred to me that the same difficulties apply to Argentine Tango, when leaders think of this dance as a series of figures rather than as lead/follow. With that in mind, I'm going to share with you what I wrote to her. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Here we go.

One of the most difficult subjects to deal with in any discussion of social dance is the whole area of couples bumping into each other on the dance floor. It seems to me that anytime you have two couples dancing today, they'll find a way to crash into one another -- even if the floor is the size of a football field. This may sound a bit cynical, nonetheless it seems to happen with considerable regularity. And in my opinion the very nature of contemporary competitive ballroom dancing of all types (more about this later) greatly exacerbates the problem (although even if we were to limit our discussion to Argentine Tango -- particularly in this country -- I would be of the same opinion).

When I was growing up during the 1940's and '50's, social dancing was commonplace in this country as a form of recreation and social interaction. In general, the way people learned how to dance was to go to dance venues, get pushed out onto the floor by well-meaning friends or relatives, and either sink or swim. If a male dancer (leader) had an instinct for dance, he'd eventually learn a few steps by imitating others who were more skilled than he, and along the way he'd also learn not to bump into other people. No one would teach him this skill; he'd just "pick it up" over an extended period of time. Men who had no particular knack for dancing would not pick up either a vocabulary of appropriate steps or the skill of avoiding collisions, and were routinely looked upon by the better dancers as lesser mortals. Over a period of several years, a decent male dancer would get much better at maintaining his own space on the dance floor, even in progressive dances such as Foxtrot, Waltz, and Peabody, where everyone was more or less vying for the same real estate.

As with men, women learned to dance by actually doing it rather than by being formally trained. There was very little -- if any -- formal training available in any case. Furthermore, most women seemed to "take to" dancing far more than most men did. The result of this -- coupled with what I am ultimately persuaded is the superior ability of women to learn pretty much anything -- was that for the most part women were able to learn how to dance far more quickly than men. In my own experience, this seems to remain true today with few exceptions. In fact, in the man-centered universe of that time, women were simply expected to be good followers as a matter of course --not to mention a few other skills such as cooking, cleaning, raising children, and only speaking when spoken to.

In today's social dance universe, things have changed rather substantially. The overall population of social dance enthusiasts has shrunk significantly due in part to the fact that dance venues have become impossible to sustain financially, and, perhaps more importantly, social dance itself has gradually been replaced by other more man-friendly pastimes -- such as bowling in the 1950's, watching sports on television while eating popcorn in the 1960's and beyond, and playing with electronic toys such as Blackberries and cell phones today.

In my opinion, another very important factor in the decline of social dance -- a decline which actually began in the 1950's -- is the more or less exclusive reliance on dance teachers in our efforts to learn anything at all about this rapidly disappearing social art form. Because there isn't a vibrant, knowledgeable dance population to provide a reality check, dance teachers now represent the only game in town. Want to learn how to dance? You can't go to the local dancehall anymore. You've got to find yourself a dance teacher.

Okay, what's the problem here? Theoretically, the upside of learning from an expert teacher is that you can get exposed to a great deal of information and dance technique quickly and in one place. You don't have to spend thirty years, going from one dance venue to another in order to get the material you want and need. And, of course, there are very few dance venues left to go to even if you wanted to. With a good teacher, you can learn fundamentals (the most important part of learning how to dance) accurately and efficiently -- rather than having to go through years of trial and error. In principle, these are major advantages in learning the complex skill of social dancing.

Which brings us to the down side. From what I've seen over the years, the overwhelming majority of dance teachers simply do not know the first thing about social dancing . And even if they are aware of what actually constitutes social dance, they consciously choose to teach something completely different instead -- often, trying to convince their students that what I would call social dance is actually bad for them!

What am I talking about here, and how dare I say this?!

I think the story begins with a nice, married couple who either don't know how to dance at all, or are unsatisfied with what they're currently doing on the dance floor. Maybe there's another couple they know who seem to be so much more skilled, more graceful, more polished -- and they seem to know lots of really neat steps. "Why can't we be as good as they are? Why can't we be better?"

Along come Vernon and Irene Castle.

The whole "dance teachers know everything, students know nothing" thing really began in earnest in America with the huge popularity of Vernon and Irene Castle in the early part of the last century. Now, before I go any further, let me state categorically that I really admire the Castles. Vernon was a tall, ungainly-looking man who weighed next to nothing. And, frankly, he danced in a kind of amateurish way that professionals today would characterize as, shall we say, less than perfect. But I absolutely love going to YouTube and watching the Castles dance. I mean, this is the history of American dance here! If you haven't seen them yet, you should stop reading right now, and go check them out.

Getting back to our nice, unskilled couple, they saw at what Vernon and Irene were doing, and they thought, "If we could do that stuff, we'd really look like good dancers! Right?

Well, actually, wrong, but I'm just reporting what they thought.

In fact, the Castles convinced many nice couples that as dance professionals they (the Castles) were indeed possessed of a better way to dance -- which, of course they felt (or maybe it was their accountants who felt) we should all learn. What they were teaching (or perhaps the better word might be "selling") was for the most part overly florid, somewhat obsequious, and unquestionably unfit for the limitations of the social dance floor. For these reasons, the majority of seasoned social dancers didn't really buy it -- but beginners -- like our nice, unskilled couple -- sincerely believed that learning the Castle style would enable them to dance just like the pros. And so they signed up for lessons in droves.

That's when serious bumping on dance floors all over America began.

Over the years following the success of the Castles, other self-appointed dance experts entered the social dance arena. The most famous of these were the Arthur Murray Organization, the Fred Astaire Organization, and, of course, the biggest franchise of them all -- the huge and immensely profitable world of International competition. These organizations ignored the way social dance was actually being done in the ballrooms, and created a new paradigm which transformed what had been a skill that was relatively easy to learn into a highly complex, extremely stylized, and very difficult to learn form of performance-oriented, competition "dancesport." Over time, simple social dancing became less and less popular on the dance floors, and these more elaborate excursions into fantasy dancing -- which most dancers found very difficult, if not impossible, to master -- ultimately became the norm.

The result of all this was that bumping has been permanently replaced by take-no-prisoners crashing.

The nature of competitive "modern" (read: progressive) international dancing is that the couple generally moves along fixed travel lines. Furthermore, the leader specifically trains to execute fixed figures and amalgamations (sequences of figures) along any given wall. A truly expert leader with many yeas of experience can sometimes alter his trajectory during a planned sequence in order to avoid dangerous situations. But ninety-nine per cent of the dancers you and I will ever meet simply do not have the requisite skill to do this effectively. And so, lots of accidents happen all the time. Even in international competitions, the banging and crashing is rampant. Oh, and by the way, in that world, nobody ever apologizes.

Are there any practical solutions to this dilemma we find ourselves mired in as a result of choosing competitive over social ballroom dancing? For one thing, I think it might help just to be aware that we're trying to do something that very few people can do well. Competitive dancing is truly for experts, not mere mortals (like most of us). If we want to try our hand at this very demanding skill, we might consider doing so out of harm's way -- meaning somewhere other than a so-called "social" dance floor. Rent some space, and practice your figures and techniques with just yourself and your partner in the room. Such a decision calls for a substantial dose of humility, but it's a very good solution. Other than that, I would suggest learning how to dance socially. There are a few (very few, unfortunately) teachers who can bring you up to speed with social dance forms of all kinds. Then, you can have lots of fun on the dance floor, and not risk being the cause of dangerous collisions with other dancers. That's what Pat and I do. (But don't forget to watch out for those other dancers -- you know, the ones who have decided not to take my advice.)

If you absolutely insist on competing, put in the time to become an expert -- before you inflict yourself on the rest of the world. The work is very difficult, progress is extremely slow, but you can do it, if that's your ultimate goal.

Good luck.



Take Your Tango over the Top!

10 Must-have Tango Moves!

with Fran Chesleigh and Pat Altman

 

Sunday, November 17

12:30 -- 3:30 p.m.

All levels welcome

 

For this one-of-a-kind, 3-hour intensive Tango workshop, Pat and I have picked out a special selection of some of our very favorite Tango moves. Once you grab these unique figures from the classic Tango repertoire, your friends will all be asking "How did you do that?' ... that is, when they stop saying "Wow!"

Here are a few highlights:

·      Unlock the secrets of the back sacada

·      Pull out a showstopper from the Virulazo legacy

·      Capture the moment with Pat's favorite adornment combos

·      Make magic with surprise variations on la cruzada

·      Burn the floor with hot traspie sequences

And lots more!

Fran Chesleigh and Pat Altman's "10 Must-have Tango Moves" offers you a unique opportunity to transform your Tango, Vals and Milonga into the polished, seriously authentic dances you've been working so hard to achieve.

Don't miss it!

Standard pricing: $35 per person

Purchased by Friday, November 15: $30 per person

No refunds no exchanges

Dance Manhattan

 

Fran and Pat's Milonga DVD series now available

If you haven't gotten your copies of Fran and Pat's Milonga DVDs, make sure you pick them up soon. This is a series of four DVDs, which cover everything we've done during our four weeks of Milonga at the Firehouse, along with lots of steps we didn't have time to work on. The series of 4 DVDs costs $100, and is packed with information about Milonga right from the basics all the way to some very challenging advanced material. People who already have these DVDs think they're great (thank you very much!), and we think you will, too. Be sure to add them to your collection.

Saturdays with Fran and Pat at Dance Manhattan

Fran teaches at Dance Manhattan from 11:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. every Saturday. He offers a beginner class in Milonga & Argentine Waltz at 11:00 a.m. as well as an intermediate class in Tango at noon. From 2:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. Fran and Pat host a special beginner/intermediate practice for bringing your skills up to speed. The cost for the practice is $10 per person. (Bringing a partner isn't necessary.) Fran and Pat are always on hand to answer any questions you may have about your dancing, and to help you with material you're working on. If you want to take Fran's classes, call Dance Manhattan at 212-807-0802 to register. If you'd like a private lesson, call Fran directly at 212-662-7692 or email him at franchesleigh@mac.com. For the practice, all you have to do is arrive with $10 and your dance shoes in hand.

Firehouse Tango hot line - We rarely cancel
We want to remind everyone that if the weather looks really bad, we will leave messages on our web site www.firehousetango.com and phone 201-825-1570. You can also reach us on our cell phone 201-826-6602 (Sue) and 201-913-8504 (Joe). Feel free to leave a message on any of these lines. We cancel only when absolutely necessary (only about six seven times in all these years), but please check whenever you're not sure. If there isn't any message, we're on.

During Hurricane Sandy, when we had only cell phone service, I was able to leave a message on my cell, so I guess that the best number to call is 201-826-6602. 
Lost and Found
 If you lost something, we probably have it. We have a few ladies' scarves and some shoes. There are also various items of clothing and jewelry in the closet. Ask Tibor at the front desk.
A final thank you

The following folks helped set up, break down and clean up before and after the milonga. Without them, there would be no Firehouse Tango.

  • Terri Lopez - 
  • Terri's son Tony
  • steve turi 
  • Steve Maisch
  • Tsipoyra Sartan
  • Mary Epiphan
  • Debbie Glaser
A reminder that Firehouse Tango does not supply wine - Your fellow tangueros bring it. Therefore, if you drink it, please make sure to bring a bottle every so often.

The folks below brought food and wine this week - and last
  • Al Schlerder - Cake
  • Jeff Yankauer - Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
  • Simon Kreymerman - Doughnuts
  • Judy Assisi - Candy
  • Herb Goodfried - Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels
  • Bonny Yankauer - Chips, Olive Spread & Guacamole
  • Jack Block - Cheese
  • Faye & Lou Levine - Cake
  • Renata Witkowska - Soya Chips
  • Jan Folsbee - Basil, Mozzarella & Tomatoes
  • Carl Remmes - Salad with Balsamic Dressing, pumpkin pies
And these people brought wine
  • Mary Pagano
  • Maria Stepanova
  • Bill Krukovsky
  • Ken Berard
  • Edna Negron
  • Horatio Piccioni
  • Rafael & Hilda
  • Charles Moorman
  • Francis & Marie
  • Maro
  • Terri Lopez
    Tango in New Jersey - Milongas