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The Choy of Sam |
| Sam Choy’s philosophy about cooking is simple:
Make it fun! |
The Final Journey |
| With the help of hospice, death can be a peaceful, dignified, even joyful experience. |
DEPARTMENT:
Shall We Dance?
by Tamara Moan
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Albert Franz’s lithe figure flits by the long bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrors of his Honolulu dance studio. On this Friday afternoon he guides his student across the breadth of the polished hardwood floor to a sultry tune, “Harlem Nocturne.” Their leather-soled dancing shoes whisper over wood.
Franz hums, attentively watching as his partner’s gauzy blue skirt twirls and sways. “You’re supposed to follow; that’s your duty!” he admonishes when the sequence goes awry. He makes corrections in a no-nonsense but lighthearted tone, then they repeat the moves three or four times until she has it down. They practice a waltz, fox-trot and tango, refining all three in the half-hour time slot.
Ballroom dancing has been Franz’s love and livelihood for almost 45 years. As a high school student in Baltimore in the mid-1950s, he auditioned for and was selected to dance on a daily TV show called “Buddy Dean’s Bandstand,” which inspired the movie Hairspray and the Las Vegas show of the same name. On the show, professional instructors taught the teens ballroom dance steps to popular rock-and-roll hits of the time — how to do the cha-cha to “Love Potion Number Nine,” how to jitterbug to “Rock Around the Clock.”
Franz was hooked. By 19, he was teaching evening dance classes after attending the University of Baltimore during the day.
After five years of teaching, Franz entered his first dance competitions in 1967. Five ballroom dances (waltz, fox-trot, tango, Viennese waltz and quick step or Charleston) and five Latin dances (rumba, samba, cha-cha, jive or jitterbug and paso doble, two-step inspired by the movements of Spanish bullfighting) are featured in such competitions.
Dancers compete in three divisions — ballroom only, Latin only or an overall category that includes all ten forms. Franz competed in the ten-dance category; jive was his specialty. He and his partners (two different ladies) were the United States Professional Ten-Dance Champions eight out of nine years — from 1975 to 1980 and in 1982 and 1983.
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Competitions have taken the 63-year-old Franz all over the world: Berlin in 1975, London and Nuremburg in 1976, Tokyo in 1977. On one trip, he stopped in Hawaii on his return from Japan. He fell in love with it after two days, bought an apartment in Honolulu, and in 1982 moved from Washington, D.C. to live in Hawaii full time.
He obtained his realtor’s license and began making sales during the day and teaching dance classes in the evenings. He finally gave in to a flood of requests for private lessons and began teaching students individually as well. He now teaches every day.
Franz focuses on preparing students for pro-am contests where they compete with professional instructors as their partners. His students have won awards in competitions spanning the globe, from Hawaii to Athens, Greece.
Lind Karlsen studied with Franz off and on for decades. Although he now lives in Tokyo, he and his wife visit Honolulu periodically and always book lessons with Franz.
In 1970, Karlsen was studying at a dance studio in Philadelphia, but was having a hard time picking up certain steps. One Saturday night he went to a party at Franz’s Danceland studio in Washington, D.C. that included a class beforehand. Franz was teaching the quick step that night — the same dance Karlsen had been struggling to master with his other instructor.
In comparison, learning from Franz, says Karlsen, “was like falling off a log. So simple. With anything you want to study, go to someone who knows it. I’d been going to someone who was pretending.”
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Today, Franz’s students range from a 15-year-old boy to couples in their 70s. They all tout the same benefits of dancing: Movement is good for physical health, listening to music improves spiritual and emotional health, and looking in the mirror is great for self-esteem. “I teach a lot about posture,” Franz says. “I call it learning to feel good about yourself.”
What he likes best is seeing his students’ attitudes toward themselves change. “It’s the mirror that does it,” Franz asserts. “Men are the worst. I say ‘Look in the mirror’ and they look at the reflection of their feet or their partner’s shoulder. Once they start looking at themselves, they see what a difference it makes to stand up and hold their shoulders back.”
With his decades of experience and armfuls of trophies, Franz has the credentials to judge competitions. In 2003 he traveled to Tokyo as an adjudicator on an international panel of judges. He hopes to play that role more often in the future. In the meantime, he keeps a full teaching schedule and participates in pro-am competitions like the Hawaii Star Ball held every fall in Waikiki (see sidebar on previous page).
As Franz teaches, you’ll often see him embellishing his steps with sassy hip thrusts and shoulder shimmies. He says, “This body is not ready for the grave yet!