One year goes by, and a new year moves in at a frightening speed.
If history repeats itself, we might be well into the second half of another
one of tango's forty-years cycles. Which means it might be downhill from
here on. We'd like to say it ain't so, but who are we to tamper with time
and fate?
Just in case the end is near, if we are to believe that the tango indeed
rises and falls in forty year cycles, it behooves us to make some resolutions.
The first hard copy of El Firulete appeared in Sunnyvale, CA in August, 1994
as a local newsletter reporting on who had gotten a new pair of shoes and
the four week engagement of a show called Forever Tango. A year later, with
the vision of Valorie Hart, it became a magazine with a strong editorial
personality, and a penchant for educating readers with original and entertaining
material. For five years El Firulete became our calling card and our way
to stay in touch with teachers and students all over the country. Our
Tango, Our dance series
educated dancers of all ages and a new generation of young teachers on the
structure of the dance, and it pioneered a modern vocabulary to communicate
the concepts of the tango dance.
Two years into the new millenium the publication began to fail to adhere
to its self-imposed monthly schedule. Blame it on the traveling, blame it
on the teaching, blame it on the dancing, blame it on the enjoyment of a
new home base and blame it on a desire it to do it all without being able
to stretch the tweny-four hours constraint of a given day. Rather than trying
to delude ourselves into believing that the world of tango needs us to do
it all, we decided to focus on the areas which we enjoy at being at our best.
Teaching and dancing are at the top of our list. Creating opportunities for
others to share the fruits of our teaching and partake in the enjoyment of
dancing together, follows right in line.
Although writing has been part of our contribution to educate, the time and
costs involved in putting out a hard copy publication were excessively inefficient
in achieving its original purposes. The creative juices of an artist can
not be turned on and off at will, so they have been channeled into a superior
instructional
book, along with a largely overdue series of instructional videotapes.