404 W. 30th Street • Austin, TX • 512.474.0980
Saturday, April 21st ONE DAY ONLY from 10-6pm!
In celebration of the IBIZ Just Say Hi Open House Event, we will be offering a one-time only discount on all salsa and ballroom inventory. New and exciting styles are in stock now! 1 ½, 2, 2½ and 3 inch heel heights available in a variety of eye catching colors!
Do you need 4 or 5 pairs of pointe shoes to last you through summer intensives? Then get ready for summer by ordering your pointe shoes in advance. To order or schedule a fitting:
Now look here. I went to see this show called April Fools. OK so I was exhausted but I knew I could not miss this show. When you get to be my age, you don’t go to just any show, but this show it was tap dancing so I had to go see it, you know what I mean.
Well when I got there it was a Vaudeville, like a circus show, a carnival with one of those questionable Master of Ceremonies, you know what I mean. When you get to be my age, you’ve seen everything. I remember my grandfather took me to a tiny circus and he spent a very long time in a fortune teller’s tent. But that is another story.
So you see here. I was very happy to be there with the Vaudeville because they are kind of cartoon characters up there and of course you have to start with the juggler lady who jiggled real good, made me laugh so hard and she could juggle too.
All the old characters were there, that Maurice guy from France I think it was him, and Mickey from the early days, and Charlie with those inquisitive eyes, and shades of the guy with the big nose, and of course Sammie charmed us and made us stop yelling so loud for a minute or two.
Of course when you get to be my age you see those old singers and tappers sticking their heads around every corner. The guy sitting next to me is a real good tapper and he would call out those old names, maybe it was Bonnie or Honey or something.
But what a guy my age sees mostly is the angels dropping down in between and on top of some of these characters. So you see, these angels talk to me, right, and they say, “Don’t miss this life. Don’t miss a minute of it.” So well OK, I can’t go to sleep so I don’t miss a split second of this two hour April Fools show.
There was the lady pickpocket character and she was in love with Sammie, you could just tell. But I’ve got to say there were two characters that were very hard to play. The pretty girl was perfect but it is very hard to play the pretty girl. Even in real life it is very hard to play the pretty girl because you got to cover up so much hurt down there somewhere. You know what I mean, how do you play all the parts that are covered up down there?
The exception to that rule is when you hobble two beauties together and they tap dance together like you have never seen and well its like twins grinning beyond cute. So then you don’t have to have two dimensions, you just have to have cute and cute.
Well the other part that is hard to play is the Mama. Everyone knows that the Mother is always wrong, right? Never can do anything right for having somebody yell at her, that’s the Mama. Well, how do you play a cartoon character of that? Enough said on that.
Well I have to say that at my age I have to be grumpy about something so I do have one complaint. They let me and my wife in even at our age, and they kept us laughing until we cried, greasing every minute with million mile an hour tapping. And you know about tap dancing with all those quick stops and trick red lights. It’s hard on the heart. It’s like when you get ready to go through a door and the green light says go and then the door slams shut. Light says go, oops gotta stop. Light says go go go, whoa wait a minute. Then light really says go now go oh oh uh oh. Then finally light says yes yes now go oh go oh oh oh ahhhhh. Well the whole show was like that with more excitement that one heart can take.
And well back to my complaint, after all that, they didn’t provide any free stretcher service to get us out of the place. Now what do you think of that?
So what do I have to say about this April Fools show? Well, I have to ask you this. Do you want to shimmy back through every rip roaring Vaudeville act you have never seen? Do you want to tango through the back streets of Buenos Aires? Do you want to ride on top of the smoothest, gutsiest, the funniest, the most sentimental rhythms you have ever felt?
Well, if you do, what are you waiting for? Call them up, these Tapestry people and you tell them I told you to tell them, “I’ll be right over.” And you know with these Vaudeville types you can’t take no for an answer. You tell them what I told you. You tell them, “I’ll be right over.” Then you ask them in one of those rhetorical tones, “You do this Vaudeville thing every night, right?” You ask them that. And then you say, “Hold the curtain.” No don’t say that. You better say, “Hold me a seat.” They’ll understand what you mean.
Tapestry’s April Fools, 4/1/12, By Tim Hurst
ONE Chell Parkins
Open Points to Life
Beginning Pulsating Power
TWO Ellen Bartel
Center Points to Life
Wishers Intersect
THREE Alvin Rangel
Fin Points to Life
Yearning Union Tangential Tango
ONE Chell Parkins Points to Life
One dimensional bodies powered to life. Wake to it. Climb to it.
Call out to electrified alternating light for dimensionality, curve into it, live into it.
Call out where stillness presides, shaking habituates, where fingers intimate mysterious capacitors within themselves.
Call out to princess wailing morning stories from towers hidden in foggy bays, surprising all bodies with waves of blue and orange and green and purple and red.
Call out to the power of death and roaring all waters ending the thinness of dimensionality, interweaving every spectrum into the bodies light.
Call in the decisive moment of bubbling movement, limb and life forever.
TWO Ellen Bartel Points to Life
Metroline. Escalator line. One lies; One rise. Both scream a stationary line.
Trains and rains and birds ripple to washes of guitars and bells.
Personages skooch in doubles and singles. Personages pile upon personages without condiment. Wishers decline ladders; gapers pass doorways never waiting even for port’s fog horn.
The brilliance of not wishing pulsates life’s baseline. Singular man states foot, slaps chest, searches hip. Singular woman slips into ice until one person digests metroline screams into a personal melody, until one person’s body draws endless escalator lines into one hug, maybe two. Then one body deserves a spin by another and all personages can now enter a rise and fall of the cavernous breath of life.
TWO AGAIN
The roar stops. All doors open as an echo. I step in alongside the many.
Something about the Metro, the Underground, the A, the C, the L, all leaving only one lingering screech that drowns out a lone person’s song. Yes, there’s something about the sub-way to nothing extraordinary, to nothing connectable, to everyone leave-able.
My sadness resonates to the length of the subterranean cave, something like a long guitar line, neither untractable, nor subtractable, certainly not subtle, and definitely without a leaning toward hilarity. Yet when the moving platform jolts and I am still standing, life is imminently breathable.
THREE Alvin Rangel Points to Life
Man to man. Tango to the death. Flags fall. Man covers.
Spin a story of punctuated violin and high pitch surprise.
Yearning union, fingers embrace earth, grip scalp, seek infinite spectral caress.
Three Points to Life, UT Dance MFA, 03/09/12, By Tim Hurst
If you need something exciting to wear to the spring flings and social dances this year, come to Movin’ Easy to check out the NEW STYLES of Salsa and Ballroom shoes in stock now! We have a SPECTACULAR selection of new styles and colors and there’s more on the way!
1 ½ inch to 3 inch heels in a variety of colors including pink, red, silver, gold and black glitter.
Brands like Capezio, So Danca, Bloch and Soul Dancer.
Hours: Mon-Thurs 10-8pm/Fri and Sat 10-6pm/Sun 1-5pm. Call us at 512.474.0980 to check for your size or come in for a fitting asap!
How are dancer’s feet different? Here a just a few ways: 1. High definition muscle tone in every part of the foot connect to every toe, to all edges of the foot, and to muscles in the ankle, knee, and hip. 2. Supple muscles in the feet stretch in every direction and connect with stretches beginning anywhere in the body from neck down through abdomen, through hip, knee, and ankle. 3. Sensitivity to how the foot touches the floor means responsive adjustments to which spot carries the weight and the angles of each part of the foot in relation to the floor.
How do dancers treat their feet? My guesses are: 1. Kindness in some way is a must. 2. Moving both feet in every direction throughout the day keeps them supple. 3. Touching the feet is a way of checking for pain points and nurturing a hard working partner.
How do dancers diagnose minor pain in joints and muscles? Here are just a few ways: 1. Any stress or strain is seen as affecting the entire body, not just one muscle. First test is a stretch involving the whole body. 2. The opposite side is a next check for imbalances and to identify the location and severity of the pain on the painful side. 3. Movement in every direction is tested to see what is working and what is not. 4. Applying a variety of dance movements tests what it is like moving into the pain and through it if possible. The dancer’s tool chest is infinite in using movements from the tiniest and gentlest to the broadest range and force. 5. Moving muscles above and below the stressed point relaxes muscles that may be responding sympathetically and creating spasms. 6. Experience with a variety of body therapies also give dancers diagnostic tools such as pressure points to hold until the pain subsides, gentle pulls and places to hold, vibratory or pulsing motions, and positions of rest.
After a year of not dancing, I am completely blindsided by the learning curve of learning Ballroom Dancing. Yes, I can remember a few steps but all the essentials I have obviously not learned or forgotten. The most gorgeous Big Band music plays while I clunk flatfooted across the floor, holding Ginger too close, and throwing her off balance with my forceful moves.
I love dancing so much. When the music begins, it is as if my tether has been untied. I fly across the room as if I was a helium balloon headed into the sky, and in my total exuberance I drag Ginger with me. It is not my intention to be inconsiderate to her; I just enter another state of consciousness hoping that she will join and that I will remember some steps in my unfocused state.
As usual that state does not work for any of us. Back to the drawing board, I have to realize that learning to dance is like learning to walk again. And here we are again.
My internal question is “What is it I have to learn in order to fly?” First lesson was how to propel from one foot to the other rather than slamming my foot down like a toddler wanting to make sure the earth wont move under the first steps. Second lesson was to hold my body up erect rather than crunching down over myself like a monkey accustomed to hunching before leaping from branch to branch.
Patience is not akin to flying or maybe it is since a baby bird does totter around on the limb a while deciding it is time to leap. So in my journey to the dance floor, I will take the time to learn to walk a new way.
I assume most people can either fake it or have a natural finesse that makes their partners comfortable enough to get through a dance. When I learn to walk, I will hold Ginger at a comfortable distance, support my weight as a homo erectus or some such species, and propel my entire body into the dance so that Ginger can read my moves. Back to the dancing room for me.
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