October/November at Firehouse Tango |
October 25 -
No birthdays, just great dancing, eating, and socializing. Sue out. Terri, Steve, and the A Team take over. (See below)
November 1 -
Halloween Milonga (See
below)
November 1, 8, 15, 29
No birthdays, just great dancing, eating, and socializing with wonderful people.
No Tango at Firehouse on Thanksgiving Day, November 23rd
Firehouse Tango will be
closed on Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, November 22nd. 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 29th. Happy Thanksgiving!
Sue out Thursday, October 25. A Team takes over
|
I'm off to visit my favorite city, Buenos Aires, Argentina My dear friend Diane and I will be visiting Buenos Aires for ten wonderful days. Fortunately, I can leave
my baby (That would be Firehouse Tango) worry free because I have incredible friends who are more than willing and able to keep the Firehouse fires burning brightly. Please support our wonderful back-up team.
The logistics - The A Team
Terri Lopez (Wonder(ful) Woman) and Steve Turi (aka Superman) have generously offered to head up our milonga logistics team in addition to their normal invaluable weekly help. The tasks involved in running Firehouse are monumental, and we are incredibly fortunate to have so many fabulous friends willing to step in whenever
needed.
But What about the Music? Al Ko
Not to worry. While we are away, your tangos, milongas and valses will be spun by fabulous guest DJ, Al Ko. Al is well known to our Firehouse friends. He and Lily come to Firehouse almost every Thursday when they are not traveling, though this is the first time he's DJ'ing for us.
Lily and Al, together with Mike Porro and Debbie Kim, host the amazing New Years Eve Milonga at Grand Ballroom in Midland Park.
How about the newsletter?
This Firehouse Tango newsletter has been published nearly every week since March, 2002 and thanks to Fran and Pat, the next two weeks will be no exception.
Among his countless talents, our remarkable instructor, Fran Chesleigh, is a professional writer. As always when I am out, he and his equally extraordinary assistant, Pat Altman, flawlessly and with a style of their own, take over the task of writing the Firehouse Tango newsletter. I will send his handiwork out when I return.
This awesome duo is usually found at “Fran’s Table” in the alcove closest to the DJ table. They are always happy to answer your Tango questions or show you how to do
something you might have missed, so make sure to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to learn from the best.
Special Halloween Milonga on Thursday, November 1st |
Don't put your costume away. Our Halloween (always one of the highlights of our year) party will take place on
November 1st. It features:
- Door prizes
- Parade of the Firehouse Tan-ghost and Tan-goblins
- Awards for best couple, most creative, funniest and sexiest costumes
- Extra time to dance and celebrate. We'll go till 11:45.
- Tango/Milonga lessons by Fran Chesleigh and Pat Altman
- Buffet dinner
- Milonga
Join us on Thursday, November 1st for our sixteenth annual Firehouse Halloween Milonga (Basic tango lessons from 7:00 to 7:30, and intermediate tango lessons from 7:30 - 8:30.)
If you don't have a costume, don't let it keep you away, but come, dance and cheer for your friends. Costumed or not, expect a great evening. In addition to awards for the most creative, best couple, funniest
and sexiest costumes, we've got some great door prizes (costume not required to be eligible.)
Of course, also included in the low price of
only $15 are lessons taught by Fran Chesleigh; a buffet dinner; and dancing and socializing with the fabulous Firehouse tangueros.
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 Our dear friend John Koski, who is at Firehouse Tango every Thursday with his wife, Judy, is in the hospital after open heart surgery. Judy says he's in good spirits and the operation was a
success. He would appreciate get-well cards.
You can send cards to
John Koski 419 Third Avenue Lyndhurst, New Jersey 07071 Last week, I played cortinas by The
Beatles. Next week, I'm sure that Al's Cortinas will be wonderful.
A cortina (curtain) is a short piece (20–60 seconds) of non-dance music that is played
between tandas at a milonga (tango dance event). The cortina lets the dancers know that the tanda has ended. The partners can then without insult thank each other and return to their
own tables, to find a new dance partner at the next tanda. Cortinas are used at many of the milongas in Argentina and Uruguay but are increasingly common elsewhere. - Wikipedia
Let us know if you are celebrating an occasion and would like to request special music for that night’s cortinas. We will try very hard to accommodate you. We welcome readers' contributions about Argentine Tango in general and Firehouse Tango in particular. Send your thoughts to firehousetango@gmail.com We welcome readers' contributions about Argentine
Tango in general and Firehouse Tango in particular. Send your thoughts to firehousetango@gmail.com
Note from Sue
This op-ed by Lisa Ko was published in last Sunday's New York Times. Lisa is the daughter of long-time Firehouse friends Lily and Al Ko.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/opinion/sunday/harvard-and-the-myth-of-the-interchangeable-asian.html
Note from Hilda and Rafael - New Address in Colorado
Dear Sue,
We are unpacking little by little, but it seems that we will never finish.
Our address is 7700 W Grand Ranch Blvd. 1
D
Denver, CO 80123
My email is hgennihilda@icloud.com
Telephone (201) 384 9148
As always we will continue traveling a lot.
Love Hilda
Genni
Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. For those of you who’ve been following our Tango Tips, this is Week Six of our examination of the qualities I think you need in order to become a good Tango dancer. Here’s the list once more:
1. Commitment 2. Patience 3. Perseverance 4. Humility 5. A good sense of humor 6.
A good teacher 7. Money 8. Natural ability
Today, we’re going to talk about teachers. We’ll discuss whether you really need a teacher at all to learn Tango. We’ll address taking a casual approach; e.g., joining a group lesson every once in a while, or
maybe before a dance event. We’ll discuss the idea of multiple teachers over time — the “workshop junkie” strategy. We’ll look at the YouTube/video shortcut way of learning. Finally, we’ll talk about regular, ongoing private lessons with a single teacher.
Do you need a teacher to learn Tango? My answer to this question would be the
following: If you were born in Argentina, if you grow up in a family of dancers, if you decide to live your life spending the majority of your time in the milongas, surrounded by top-level dancers who are going to show you the ropes by example, and if you give yourself twenty to thirty years to complete your on-the-job training, you might eventually become a good dancer. The key word here is might. It’s not guaranteed by any means, but it’s
possible.
On the other hand, if you’re like most of us who live in countries other than Argentina — or maybe Uruguay — some form of teaching is, I think, absolutely essential.
Can a little teaching go a long way? Okay, you bite the bullet and decide
to take a few lessons here and there. You make a commitment to join the regular group lesson before a weekly milonga. What’s the harm? You might even go as far as signing up for a class. What the heck; it’s only once a week for a month. That should do the trick, right?
Well, in fact, wrong. You might have some fun doing these things, you might get to hang out with some nice people, but
actually learning how to dance Tango — maybe the most difficult, most complex social dance there is on the planet?
Not really.
What about Tango workshops? If you spend any time at all checking out Tango on the Internet, you know that there are lots
(and lots) of special workshops available that you can sign up for. Pick your favorite famous Tango maestro. He or she is probably offering a workshop you can’t afford to miss in the very near future. Or a group of heavyweights has gotten together to bring you a full week of non-stop Tango immersion bliss somewhere really super-duper where you might like to spend some quality time anyway. Isn’t it a given that exposure to multiple viewpoints — by the best of the best — is the fast track to Tango
mastery?
Definitely yes, if you read (and believe) the advertising. Probably no, as you may have already found out for yourself by actually engaging in this very questionable, ultimately extremely illusive — not to mention seriously expensive — way of trying to learn Tango. The big question students usually ask themselves at the end of one of these don’t-miss-it, blowout events is “Can I
actually remember what I learned here?”
Now, I’m not saying that all workshops are without value. Pat and I conduct workshops ourselves from time to time. I think they’re terrific as a way to supplement your ongoing learning process. But if you think they’re a substitute for the regularity of a progressive learning process — if you’re addicted to workshops — I seriously believe that you’re kidding
yourself.
Can’t I get everything I need from YouTube? As we all know, the Internet these days is loaded with tons of in-depth information about every conceivable subject imaginable. If you “google” Argentine Tango, the stream of possibilities that you’ll see will be endless. If your idea of dancing is accumulating figures and sequences —
or maybe adornments — this is absolutely the place for you. The same would be true of dance videos. Nine out of ten, nineteen out of twenty, ninety nine out of a hundred, focus more or less exclusively on pre-fabricated, choreographed, usually highly complicated dance steps. That’s what everyone wants, of course, and so that’s what sells.
The problem is that if you actually want to learn how to dance,
YouTube and dance videos are all largely useless. Virtually all these things offer the same message: Here’s some really neat stuff you can do after — the operative word being after —you know how to dance.
How do you learn how to dance? After going through the casual lesson-once-in-a-while approach, after hitting the workshop junkie trail for months, maybe years, and after going on YouTube and
dance videos, the challenge that remains staring you in the face is: How do you learn how to dance Tango?
What’s the best way to learn Tango? I may be a bit prejudiced here, but in my opinion the best way to learn Tango — in fact, I think, the only viable way if you weren’t born and raised in Argentina — is to
make an ongoing commitment to long-term private instruction by a single teacher whom you come to know and trust. Every other method we’ve talked about here has merit, but they’re all severely limited in terms of taking you from being someone who doesn’t know how to dance to someone who does. In the private lesson, you work closely with one teacher.
You get to know him/her. He/she gets to
know you. Over time, you form an intimate relationship (I’m talking about dance here, folks!), in which you very gradually progress from ground zero to relative mastery of what (let’s call) the fundamental elements of individual movement as well as the complexities of interaction with a partner on the dance floor. This is what you really need, and I think the only way you’re going to get it is through a highly knowledgeable private teacher.
Of course, the next series of questions is: Who is the right teacher? Do all teachers have the same expertise? (Answer: No, they most definitely do not!) Do I like this teacher? Do I feel that I can learn from this teacher? And finally: When push comes to shove, do I have the stomach for engaging in what may be the most difficult challenge of my life; i.e., the process of really learning how to dance
Tango?
When you’ve asked yourself all these questions, and come up with satisfactory answers, you’ll be ready to tackle the next subject on our list — the little matter of money. We’ll talk about that next week.
Downloads, downloads, downloads!
|
Now, you can download Fran and Pat’s exclusive Tango Workshop Video Collection to your computer or handheld device.
If you’ve ever attended one of our Tango Workshops, you know just how much fun they are,
how much solid information they offer, and how important each one can be to your progress as a social Tango dancer!
· Starting now, you can access any technique, any figure from any or all of these great Workshops anytime, anywhere – all at a single click.
·
You can call up your favorite Tango moves whenever and wherever you want to see them.
· All you have to do is to download Fran and Pat’s Workshop Videos to you PC or handheld device, and you’re good to go.
Check out our Web site to find out more about our exclusive Tango Workshop Video
Collection. It’s quick; it’s easy; it’s priceless!
Download Now: www.franchesleigh.com/videos
QUESTIONS? Send Fran an email https://www.franchesleigh.com/contact/
IT’S TIME TO REGISTER for Fran and Pat’s Special Workshop: Mastering the Crossed System!
|
Only $40 for 3 hours of Crossed System bliss!
Sunday, October 21st, 2018 12:30 -- 3:30 p.m.
Pearl Studios 500 8th Avenue (between 35th and 36th Streets) 12th Floor, Room 1206 REGISTER
NOW at franchesleigh.com through Saturday, October
20
$45 per person at the door on Sunday, October 21st. Checks and cash accepted. No refunds. No exchanges. All levels welcome. No partner required.
Downloads, downloads, downloads!
|
Now, you can download Fran and Pat’s exclusive Tango Workshop Video Collection to your computer or handheld device.
If you’ve ever attended one of our Tango Workshops, you know just how much fun they are,
how much solid information they offer, and how important each one can be to your progress as a social Tango dancer!
· Starting now, you can access any technique, any figure from any or all of these great Workshops anytime, anywhere – all at a single click.
· You can call up your favorite Tango moves whenever and wherever you want to see them.
· All you have to do is to download Fran and Pat’s Workshop Videos to you PC or handheld device, and you’re good to go.
Check out our Web site to
find out more about our exclusive Tango Workshop Video Collection. It’s quick; it’s easy; it’s priceless!
Download Now: www.franchesleigh.com/videos QUESTIONS? Send Fran an email https://www.franchesleigh.com/contact/
Our cancelation policy - We STILL rarely cancel
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Even though we had to cancel twice this year because of blizzards, we still 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 my cell phone 201-826-6602.
Feel free to leave a message.
We cancel only when absolutely necessary (still only about ten 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.
The folks below brought food and wine this week -
- Henry Kim - Girl Scout
Cookies
- Barbara Lombardi - Popcorn
- Ingrid Jacob - Apple Cake
And these people brought wine
- Mary Pagano
- Barbara Lombardi
- John Sullivan
- George Ngo
- Justin Schulman
- Marion Levine
- Bob Brillo
- John Barous
Filip Ross Art Dance Studio Presents
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WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
An Original Theatrical
Dance Performance
By: Filippo Ross-Gurrieri
Saturday, November 3 at 8pm
Sunday, November 4 at 5pm
Teatro Latea @ Flamboyan Theatre
107 Suffolk Street
(Btw Rivington & Stanton)
New York, NY 10002
For Tickets:
800.838.3006 ext.1
Los Pitucos Milonga in Oakland, NJ this Saturday, October 20 |
A little bit of Buenos Aires in Oakland, NJ Please join us for another great Milonga on Saturday, October 20th, 2018 This month special guest instructor is Silvana Brizuela Weigel Silvana Brizuela, originally from Buenos Aires, is a teacher and
performer in New York City at Dardo Galletto Studios in Times Sq, at Starlight Dance Center in Nutley, New Jersey, and in Boston at Dance
Union in Somerville, Massachusetts. More information about her could be found on her website at https://sbwdance.wordpress.com/about/ Workshop starts
At 7:00pm Milonga at 8:00pm Plus performance, raffle, Chacarera and more Milonga Los Pitucos is the first and only Milonga to offer gourmet refreshments, prepared fresh,
by our chef "El Tordo". Chef Tordo takes pride in creating a home made dish for every event. Couples, singles and beginners welcome! No partner necessary.
Bring a friend and enjoy great music, floor, "delight"(dish) and of course
friends!
Admission $15, including the workshop and home cooked "delight
Location: THE AMERICAN LEGION 65 Oak Street
Oakland, NJ
07436 For directions click here
Los
Pitucos Milonga brings the best of Argentine Tango to Northern New Jersey. Experience the finest of Buenos Aires at our Saturday night Milonga at the American Legion. Los Pitucos is a Monthly event which is held on the Third Saturdayof the month... Find yourself engulfed in the spirit of Buenos Aires, circa 1940. Mingle with other delightful Tango
dancers. Allow the romance of the period music to move you. Your evening's hosts "El Tordo" and "El Zurdo" are dedicated to an authentic and enjoyable
Tango experience. Our DJ (and instructor) El Tordo, incorporates composers from the "Golden Age of Tango" to replicate the best of the Milongas of Buenos
Aires. Milonga Los Pitucos is the first and only Milonga to offer gourmet refreshments, prepared
fresh,
by our chef "El Tordo". Chef Tordo takes pride in creating a home made dish for every event. We have been bringing the finest Tango events and music to New Jersey since
2009.
● Beginners Welcome... no
partner necessary. ● BYOB ● Munchies & Finger food (Feel free to bring a dish to
share...) ● The evenings "delight" is made fresh before the Milonga by chef "El Tordo" Facebook Members: Please join Los Pitucos Milonga group by clicking here
Simply Social Dancing November/December |
| Hi dancers,
Here is a summary of dance classes and events for the next 2 months.
Mondays - West Coast Swing
Tuesdays - Salsa and Argentine Tango
Please let me know if you plan on
attending. Lisa |
| __________NOV. & DEC. CLASSES ____________
MONDAYS Nov. 5, 12, & 19 Dec. 3, 10, & 17
West Coast Swing
Workshops - 6 weeks 7:30 to 9:00 pm
Learn this fun Swing dance to R&B music. It is
helpful to know basic triple time Swing rhythm for this class.
We will work on basic patterns during first 30 minutes: Basic release, Sugar Push, Passes, Tuck turn, & 8 ct Whip turn *Intermediate students - work on technique during the first 1/2 hour. _______
We will then move on to advanced beginner, and then intermediate
patterns: Release variations, Passes & Sugar Push with turns, Whip variations. Practice time will be included.
*Beginners should continue for at least the second 1/2 hour or longer if they are able. Cost: $60.00 (6 weeks of classes) Cost: $15.00 for an individual
class
________________________________________
TUESDAYS Nov. 6, 13, 20 Dec. 4, 11, 18
Intermediate Salsa - 6 weeks 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Prerequisite: students must know the Break steps, Underarm turns and Crossbody Lead. _______
Argentine Tango Workshops - 6 weeks 8:00 - 9:30 pm
We will work on basic patterns during first 30 minutes. Tango walks, Basic left and right
turns, Cruzada, & Ochos *Intermediate students - work on technique with basics.
We will then move on to advanced beginner & intermediate patterns: Molinetes, Ochos in Crossed System, Ocho Cortado, Sacadas, & Boleos.
*Beginners should continue for at least the second 1/2 hour or longer if they are
able.
______
Cost: $60.00 Salsa class (6 weeks of classes) Cost: $60.00 Tango class (6 weeks of classes) Cost: $100.00 for two classes (intermediate level)
Cost: $15.00 for an individual class or $20.00 for both
classes.
***************************
Monthly class: 3rd Saturday Nov.
17th Dec. 15th
Women's Exercise & Technique Classes 2:00 to 3:00 pm *Time Change* Strengthening and Stretching to support your
dancing
You will learn a mix of pilates, yoga, and dance exercises, which will result in you feeling limber and strong. Instead of feeling depleted, you will leave with more energy! ______________________
3:00 to 4:00 pm *Time
Change* Technique class for Salsa, Samba, Tango, and West Coast Swing
We will work on posture, balance, and body movements to improve your gracefulness and refine how you dance.
*No men - so the women can stay focused on improving without feeling self-conscious. Please wear
comfortable clothes to workout in.
Cost: $20.00 for both hours.
Cost: $15.00 for one hour.
***************************
Private Lessons Cost: $60.00 per hour Cost: $540.00 for 10
lessons
____________
EVENTS _____________ |
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