Dance News

 

Note on the Cascade Casino dances.  I've been promoting these on my brochures lately because I provide the music and DJ services for these dances and Robyn Picard provides the dance lessons.    Robyn and I have an excellent working relationship with Cascades and they have arranged their dates as to not overlap with my dates.

 

Requests for DJ services - Every year I get requests to do DJ work for weddings and Christmas Parties and such.  Typical weddings want music I'm not interested in playing.   However I have done a number of weddings for Ballroom dancers, and I don't mind doing that.   I have a very large West Coast Swing selection, 50's & 60's ballroom music, and now a very good selection of fabulous regulation Ballroom music in addition to great Latin and Country dance music.  If you have a party that is largely ballroom dancers and don't want your typical wedding DJ, I can help you!  

 

Dance Pricing - I've noticed that several dance / lesson venues have increased pricing for 2012.  As I mentioned a couple of years ago, while you, the dancer, obviously don't want the prices to increase, dance hosts and teachers want a reasonable return for the services they're offering you!   We have nothing that can be made cheaper in China!   My price will remain at $20 for 2012 and I will continue to offer brand name refreshments, the lower mainland's best food layout, an intermediate level dance lesson each dance, unbeatable floor, and fabulous music for dancers of all stripes.

 

Jan 12 - A huge thanks to everyone who came to our New Years dance, thank you for your support.  We had way too much goodies, cheese and wine!   Thank you so much to Sandy Jurick who brought out not only the Coquitlam Arthur Murray, but some of the White Rock group also.   We also had 21 single ladies, so I tailored the music so they could have fun also.  Lastly thanks to dance teachers Robyn & Don Picard, Maggie Bretton, Carlos Loyola and Robert Ross for their support and joining us for a great night of fun.

 

This has been a whirlwind 11 days for Bertha and I because by the time we got everything packed up and back to my place it was 3:00am.   Eight hours later I got a call that my mom had probably 24 hours to live.  She’s had Alzheimer’s and strokes for the last 16 years and my dad has looked after her till the end.   We cleaned up the New Years stuff and headed up to Kamloops and she passed away Friday the day of her 59^th anniversary.   We had a “Notebook” (remember the movie) moment Wednesday for over 2 hours, she couldn’t talk to us but she appeared wide awake.   My parents were dancers and I mentioned before that my dad believed that you could Foxtrot to anything!   Still, my parents never made it to any of my dances but on a visit to Kamloops in 1997 I managed to get in a 40 second Rumba with my mom – and she followed pretty good!  It was from her I got my musical talent.   She was an artist, photographer, musician (piano, guitar & accordion), her and her sister made 4 albums at age 19, and we grew up (I have four younger sisters) singing and playing a lot of tunes from the 40’s & 50’s.   Here a waltz she loved and that we got to sing to her one last time.

 

Thus the reason for no newsletters and not answering your emails was that I didn’t have access to my computer and I forgot the username and logon to my website to pick up my emails and at least respond in a timely manner.

 

Emilia (Silvio’s dance) has cancelled her monthly dances and is offering just the Thursday night practice dances.

 

Here’s a fabulous Rumba I heard at Bill McKinnon’s dance in December which I finally found and played at my New Years dance – “Song From A Secret Garden”.  No vocals an instrumental with a gorgeous melody and beautiful chord changes and 4:32 long.

 

My dance Calendar, for what I call “mixed Ballroom dancing” (up to 17 styles of dance music played) is now updated.  As noted in the bottom of this email, I will promote this type of dancing in my newsletters (these emails take a long time to make up as it is), and as long as your dances aren’t on my dance dates.  I ask that in return you promote and make available my promo materials at your dances.

 

New Years Pictures

 

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Sept 5 - In the early 70’s I played keyboards in bands and did three years of karate until a free-fight injury blocking a kick shut me down.  I finished the fight, and got my points but two weeks later found I’d fractured my right wrist.  I quit karate to save my keyboard career and went to college.  That injury took 2 years to heal.  With no exercise regime I had serious restless leg syndrome - a term that wasn’t to be invented till decades later.   When my oldest son spent two years in Japan I was unwilling to spend 9 hours on a flight with RLS!  After a night of dancing I have RLS and I used to get severe leg cramps around 2-3am.   Watching that poor tennis player Rafael Nadal on TV during a post match interview I felt his pain as most of us have.   But today I seem to have a cure.  My doctor tested me for deficiencies, and vitamins, medicinals, water, and simple stretching didn’t work but this does.   Like most people my age I have sore knees which is helped immensely by exercise, but what I do is hold onto a chair and keeping my back straight do knee bends.  I do that 40 times which tires the muscles and gets rid of RLS, and then do a thigh stretch 30-40 seconds on each leg usually twice, followed for good measure, 40 toe rises - a real good exercise for dancers.

 

 

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