Picture this: You. Your hot date. Some Champagne. Romantic Music. Flawless tandas. Now imagine it without the hot date and the Champagne (oh come on, you won’t miss them that much) and you’ve got our Holiday Milonga, Thursday at 8:00 pm. Think of it as a dress rehearsal for New Year’s Eve. After all, practice makes perfect.

While you’re thinking of it and planning your entrance, you can view last week’s Picasa album here (yeah, yeah, the good photographer was on hiatus.)

There will be no lesson, no announcements, no practica. We won’t even make you do that mixer dance. It’s all about you and the night and the music.

As they say in the theatre to convey good wishes for a successful performance – Break a leg, Daaahling!

Directions

You don’t have to spend tonight in the drugstore looking for those bath salt gifts. We’re going to solve all your problems so you can come to our last lesson of the year at 8:00 and the practica at 9:00 tonight at SPC. 

We have the perfect gift for you to give to your favorite dancer, to all the wannabees you know, or to yourself. It really doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice. Central Jersey Dance Society is offering a five week beginner tango series on Mondays, starting January 2nd. The first and last lessons will be taught by Judy Moore of CJDS. The middle three lessons will be taught by Robin Thomas, one of the best tango teachers around. Robin teaches at Princeton, Yale and Columbia. If you graduate from his class, you can consider that you’ve had an Ivy League education in tango. Not bad. All the particulars are here. If you want to give this as a gift, CJDS will make you a nice gift certificate. Email Judy for that or for the CJDS discount coupon she has for Viva readers who buy the beginner series.

Join us tonight at 8 to get in the holiday spirit. And mark your calendars now – our Holiday Milonga is next Thursday at 8.

Tango Savings Time starts this week, Thursday to be precise. Viva’s practica will start at 8:00 p.m. this week and every week for the duration of the winter doldrums. (If you’d like to see it begin even earlier, leave a comment above on the right.) Think of us as the antidote to dark and cold.

We’ve heard of trial in absentia but tango in absentia is entirely new. Yes, they’re really doing what it looks like they’re doing.

This isn’t necessary. We provide a nice space with heat, light, air conditioning, a smooth floor and good music. It’s much more comfortable than what’s going on in the pictures. So, please, come down off that mountain. Take off those parkas and poles. Then get on a plane and come home. All is forgiven.

We hope to see you (and your fellow skiers) at the Suzanne Patterson Center this Thursday at 8:00 p.m.  Mukluks optional.

And so will you if you come to our calisita lesson tonight. The musicality series continues with an exercise in recognizing musical phrases.

It’s too early to start baking Christmas cookies or hiding Chanukah gelt, but if you learn to spot musical phrases, your rendition of Jingle Bells will be better than ever. And once you’ve mastered calisitas, you’ll be the best Dreidel player around. You couldn’t make better preparations for the holidays, could you?

Please join us tonight at 9:15 at the Suzanne Patterson Center, directions here.

But 19 tango days left ’til New Year’s Eve. We just wanted to be sure you’ve got your priorities straight. There’s still plenty of time to master those paradas and  calisitas so you’ll be fully prepared to drink Champagne triumphantly from the nearest pair of Comme-il-Fauts when the ball drops.

Our musicality series continues this week. That musicality stuff is way harder than it looks. Don’t try it at home, boys and girls. It requires a professional. Ours will be on hand at 9:15 on Thursday, December 15th with a lesson in recognizing the musical phrases (while doing calisitas, YES!!) Please join us then. Directions below.

This week we have our Picasa album and a BONUS video of Guillermo demonstrating enrosques. This you should definitely try at home, over and over and over again.

Directions

First we celebrated Papa Hemingway’s birthday. It would have been better in Key West with some big game (you know, lions and tigers) roaming around, but we made do with cheesecake and flamenco ukulele. See the video here.

Papa Hemingway's Birthday Dance

Then we really did see a man dance with his wife. And what a man! What a wife! We all pretended not to be gawking while Diego and Carolina were taking a spin around the dance floor.

If you missed it, you’ll want to come at 9:15 on Thursday because you never know what celebrity sightings might occur.

The lesson this week will be about musicality and recognizing the stops. The essence of tango is the stops, the pauses. That’s why there’s a whole milonga named La Pausa! It’s that important. And you’ll get a head start on your New Year’s resolution to become a perfect tanguero. You can’t pass that up, can you?

Directions

The music fills the room. Vibrations. Sensations. Soft beats. Hard beats. That’s what our lesson is about tonight – musicality, finding those hard and soft beats and dancing in time to them.

Let’s see – Xmas Shopping; either you’re all done or it’s too soon to start. Office Party; dreading it but it’s not here yet. Eating Your Weight in Pie; that’s so last week. Dieting to Look Good for New Year’s Eve; too late to start. Redecorating the House for the Holidays; ditto.

There, that nicely clears your agenda for you, doesn’t it?  All that’s left is tango and you’re fresh out of excuses.

So please join us tonight at 9:15 at the Suzanne Patterson Center, 45 Stockton St. in Princeton for good company, good food, good dancing and some of the nicest tangueros in these parts.

We know you’ve been on your best behavior for days what with the relatives and all. You even refrained from throttling that woman at the Black Friday sale. Now you’d like a little respite. Sorry. We have other plans for you.

You know that blank Tango Etiquette page of ours? Well, finally it says something. About time. When you combine that with our four week series of lessons in musicality starting this Thursday, you’re going to be all set for our first Holiday Milonga on December 29th. 

Here’s what you have to do – Come to the SPC at 9:15 this Thursday, December 1st for a musicality lesson in listening to the hard and soft beats in tango, vals and milonga. Follow that up with the next three musicality lessons in stops, musical phrases and hearing the strong beat. Read the etiquette page.

By the end of December you’re going to be dancing beautifully, in perfect time to the music, with manners that would make your Mom proud. Us too. You want to make Mom proud, don’t you?

 Directions