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New Millennium Ballroomand
Educational Center
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Welcome to the New Millennium Ballroom web-site. This page was created to introduce you to our wonderful world of CHOREOLOGY in dance. Whether you are a seasoned professional tango king, or just a boogie beginner, we at New Millennium Ballroom want you to be able to enjoy all that dancing has to offer. Come meet new people or bring old friends, we will make sure that you have a good time and learn to master the Art of Dance with a good understanding of MUSICOLOGY....
Our professional instructors teach American and International Ballroom Style Rhythm & Smooth ****Classes are Held****
Also Specializing in Corporate Events. Music&Video Productions American and International Rhythm and Smooth Special Events & Training:
Learning to dance is not just fun, but it may come in handy in situations such as weddings, nightclubs, birthday parties, or just to impress your neighbors. It's a therapeutic tool for mental and physical health. It's communication. Regular lessons start at $12.00 a class and we have weekly dance parties and Formal Nights. We offer classes daily so take a look at our schedule and see what times are best for you to stop by and see us! |
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Multi-Cultural
Dance... Generating multi-cultural exchanges between South Florida and Europe, New Millennium Ballroom promotes and manage artists, musicians and dancers worldwide. New Millennium Ballroom instructors are certified and have performed and taught across the country. In 1998, Francois Jacques, presented Mambo/Salsa at the International Dance Teacher’s Association Congress in Hamburg Germany and the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Francois’s presentation lead the development of cooperative programs with dance schools in Germany, Greece and Cyprus. With the growing popularity of this dance style, New Millennium Ballroom now hopes to expand into other areas of the U.S. and Europe.. Through the medium of ballroom dancing, the company’s goal is to help others broaden their horizons by introducing them to people of various cultures. They believe this dance form can also help others improve their social life. New Millennium Ballroom is presently reaching out to after school programs recreation centers and schools in an attempt to offer our youth an alternative to “the streets” by placing them in the enjoyable learning environment of dance. “Learning ballroom dancing is a universal language and a good way to understand and communicate with others. While we can overcome some barriers by speaking a foreign language, dance is ultimately a Sacred & Divine language that allows the body to express ideas and feelings,” says Francois Jacques. And Francois is not alone in this belief that “dance is also a therapeutic tool and a valuable investment for physical health and psychological balance. Learning to dance well is the equivalent to speaking a language fluently. The skill of communicating in a language fluently may lead Society to peace..."Investors Needed for New venture project... New Millennium Ballroom & Educational Center, Film & Music Productions Company. If you are interested: Email: Lacreole@bellsouth.net for info. The Miami Herald July 26,1997 Reported
NOT STRICTLY
BALLROOM
The winter that Haiti crumbled, so did Fabie Bodek's illusion that she was anything but American. Returning home to Haiti three years ago as a translator for the U.S.-led multinational invasion force, Bodek, then 26, found no home at all. The country she had imagined and idealized since coming to Miami when she was 10 was a country of strangers. I felt as if life -- the hardship of life -- had hardened their hearts,'' she says. ``I kept telling my friends who were with me, `This is not what I thought it was like. They have changed.' And my friends said, `No, they haven't changed. You just didn't know them.' '' Then one night, Bodek wandered into a shop in Port-au-Prince, attracted by the sound of dance music and the sign Policard Institut De Danses Internationales . Unknowingly, she had entered a life-changing passage, one that would lead to a quirky ballroom 600 miles away in eastern Hallandale, where young black Haitians and elderly white Americans twirl side-by-side under twinkling lights. Where white and black, young and old, American, Hispanic and Haitian learn not just the waltz, but a deeper understanding of an eternally mysterious process -- the search for belonging. A summer Sunday evening in a Hallandale Publix parking lot: Among the shoppers in shorts and T-shirts are couples in suits and cocktail dresses. From one set emanate scents of sweat and produce; from the other, scents of cologne and romance. All night long, the handsomely dressed couples -- an incongruous mix of mostly older whites with distinctly Northeastern accents, middle-aged Hispanics, and 20-to-30ish blacks chatting in Creole and French -- converge several doors down from the grocery at a former movie theater, now called Club Kay's. They are there because of a bridge constructed between their very separate lifestyles by Francois Jacques, a 38-year-old Haitian ballroom dance instructor. Through his nightly lessons and weekend concerts, Jacques practices a joyful philosophy: ``Dancing is a way of fitting in anywhere.'' Club Kay's has become a rare South Florida entity -- a place where cultures don't collide, but blend. The evening begins at 6 with a deejay, Margo Newman, spinning salsa, rumba and other Latin tunes; two hours later, the mix relies on American ballroom standards. About two-thirds of the crowd of 300 or so is older white and younger Hispanic; much of the rest is mixed-age Haitian, and while there is little interracial dancing here, many already have twirled in each other's arms at Jacques' $20-a-month, twice-weekly lessons. The complete compendium of ballroom dancing happily unfolds -- the gliding one-two-three beats of the waltz, the jaunty side-together side-together back-step of American swing, the infectious four-and-one TWO-three of the mambo; the stalking, deliberate slow-slow quick-quick slow rhythm of ballroom tango. Professional-caliber dancers -- there are many -- stride smoothly, speedily along the dance floor's perimeter. Longtime couples comfortable with a few familiar steps and out-of-step novices are in the center or off in a corner. Then, around 11, the deejay packs up her CDs and most of the older white couples go home. But the Haitians stay. And more keep coming, until they pack the place. The Tennessee Waltz and Stompin' at the Savoy give way to the soaring synthesizer and rhythmic, sensuous bass of taped Haitian dance tunes. At 1 a.m., legendary Haitian bandleader Coupe Cloue climbs onstage with his band of congas and guitars, and the joint literally jumps, shaking from the freight-train volume of the 73-year-old's famous compas . The Haitians won't quit dancing until 4 a.m. At this hour, they have the place to themselves. The Americans are home in bed, too pooped to assimilate. Ready to rhumba About the same time Fabie Bodek's illusions about Haiti were collapsing, Frank and Joe Moretti's fantasies about the good life in South Florida were soaring. The brothers from upstate New York had come to Hallandale to start a ballroom. Not a dance club, but a real ballroom, like New York's Stardust and Roseland -- one with a bar, a menu and a big band. Neither Frank, 51, nor Joe, 59, is a dancer, but both grew up on Tommy Dorsey and love big-band music and the nightclub excitement that goes with it. Everything seemed to fall in place. The Morettis found a defunct one-screen movie theater on East Hallandale Beach Boulevard that was cavernous enough to accommodate a 3,000-square-foot dance floor and stage, plus a 100-foot-long bar and a buffet. And it was just across the Intracoastal from Hallandale's oceanside condo canyon, where thousands of white, elderly, Northeast retirees were presumably ready to rhumba. Then, like Bodek's illusion, the Morettis' fantasy began to fall apart. The city of Hallandale delivered the first bad news.Thetheater, so close to the ocean, lay upon a base of sand. Inspectors feared the whole thing might collapse under the weight of cha-cha-ers. So they ordered the brothers to sink pilings below the theater, and a simple conversion suddenly bloomed into an $800,000 monster renovation. The Morettis dug into their savings. During the construction of what would be the largest ballroom floor in South Florida, they also set about hiring musicians for a 17-piece band they would call the Starlites. Finally, two years ago, Club Kay's opened. And just as the Morettis hoped, hordes of dancers crossed the Intracoastal and crowded into the parking lot in all of their ballroom finery. Then the brothers made another nearly disastrous discovery. Ballroom dancing actually is the most unromantic of romantic-looking pursuits. Though it seems effortless in Fred Astaire movies, it is a precise, complex art that requires a great deal of stamina and concentration -- so much that beginner couples are warned never to look longingly into one another's eyes, lest they lose the rhythm or twirl into a collision. Consequently, ballroom dancers have no more interest in eating or drinking between foxtrots than a sprinter would have between 100-yard dashes. And they don't much care for live music, either. Taped music has a more consistent tempo. So the Morettis' Big Band, bar and buffet were nearly a bust. Until Francois Jacques danced into their lives, bringing with him South Florida's Haitians to the rescue. Saturday Night Fever In Bodek's words, Haitians are famous ``party animals.'' They are not generally ballroom dancers, but they love live compas, the dominant dance music of Haiti, and will dance a simple Merengue all night long, between wining and dining. The Morettis didn't know any of that, until Frank bumped into Jacques, who was working for an Arthur Murray studio and Luigi's dance club in Fort Lauderdale. In Jacques, the Morettis found a trained sound engineer with the know-how to sign top-ranked Haitian bands and performers, such as Sweet Mickey and Skah Shah #1 etc, as well as a talented instructor who has trained many students to compete in dance competitions. Jacques had come to Miami to visit his brother Denis in 1984 and ended up staying. He had been working as an entertainment programmer for Haiti's main cable-TV company, TeleHaiti, broadcasting throughout Port-au-Prince American movies like Flash Dance and Saturday Night Fever. Five years before Bodek had entered the Policard Institut De Danses Internationales in Port-au-Prince, Jacques had walked into the same place -- the studio of Harry Policard, then Haiti's only ballroom instructor, and, he too, discovered his passion. It wasn't the career in law that his prominent father -- then the prefet of Les Cayes on Haiti's southwestern tip -- had envisioned for him, but it was a better bet than soccer, which Jacques also loved. In Jacques' childhood, dancing had been a way of belonging. One of a family of 12 children, with an aunt living next door who had 13 more, he grew up in an environment in which friends and family got together often -- either to play sports or dance. ``Dancing is a universal language,'' he says. ``I can go anywhere in the world, the only black man on a ballroom dance floor, and through tango or cha-cha, communicate with everyone else there.'' For the past year, he has been proving it. Sometimes it takes some nudging. ``Sur la piste! (on the floor!)'' he commands, arranging the men and women in facing rows, then ordering the women to choose partners. ``At first, the Haitians and Americans tend to keep apart,'' he says. ``But I make them change partners to learn the steps until pretty soon they're doing it without me telling them.'' With men in chronic short supply, a few partnerless women often stand by themselves in erect dance position -- left arm crooked as if around a shoulder, right arm extended as if reaching for a partner's hand, chin tilted slightly leftward -- and practice with the rest. Graceful dancers like Bodek, after seven months a star pupil, twirl arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, with hapless Hallandale male retirees who look as if they forgot to take off their spiked golf shoes. In at least one of the racially mixed matches, a couple ignored Jacques' strict prohibition against looking into each other's eyes -- and the result was a waltz down the aisle. Yvonne and Webert Benoit met over mambo and recently married. ``We met at the lessons, and discovered we had other things in common besides dancing,'' says Yvonne, who is American. Webert is Haitian. ``We both do tae kwon do. How many people do you know who do martial arts and ballroom dancing together?'' Haitian gentry When many of the Haitians explain the appeal of ballroom dancing, they say the music and finery remind them of the lifestyle they left behind in Haiti. These are mostly Haitian gentry who held positions of influence and came to South Florida in the early '80s before the fall of the Duvalier regime. Many have had to take lesser jobs here, but through hard work have assimilated into white, upper-middle-class neighborhoods from West Palm Beach to South Dade. They resent being asked if they are from Miami's working-class Little Haiti. ``We're not off boats,'' Chantal Bonaparte says pointedly. Bodek, whose family came to Miami in 1978, grew up in Miami Shores and attended schools in North Miami Beach. But somehow assimilation never happened. ``I was going to JFK Middle, which was a white school then, and I pretty much kept to myself. Now that I think about it, I was lonely, but at the time I didn't feel it because school was just for study and work, and at home I could have fun with my family. I had many nieces and nephews and we all lived together. ''I thought I did little outside my family because we weren't in Haiti. If I were there, I would have had friends and gone places. I always felt I was 100 percent Haitian, meaning that even though I grew up here, there was nothing American about me.'' Then, three years ago, a shock: rejection as a Haitian in her homeland when she returned with the multinational force. ``People immediately spotted me as someone who had not grown up in Haiti,'' she says. ``My ideology was not like theirs; it was tainted. For the first time, I felt like an American.'' Bodek returned to Miami, where she now works as an ESOL teacher at Lindsey Hopkins Technical Education Center, with a revelation: ``I said to myself, `This is my home. This is where I live and where I'm going to bring up my family. And I need to start acting American. I AM an American.' '' And remembering the magic of the waltzes and merengues she saw at Harry Policard's dance studio in Port-au-Prince, she sought out his protege, Jacques, and became one of Club Kay's stars. Recently, Jacques invited his students to a young nephew's Holy Communion party, partly, he says, so they could see a real Haitian party, but also to introduce more friends and relatives to ballroom dancers. ``I like people and I don't like to be alone, and I want my ballroom family to be part of my real family in Florida,'' he says. Meantime, Frank and Joe are diversifying. In addition to ballroom dance nights, Club Kay's has Latin Nights and Rave Nights. And Frank and Joe have just started another one, on alternating Wednesdays. Everyone ready for ``Iranian Disco?'' Information: (954) 457-7538. 954-394-3159 Email: lacreole@bellsouth.net Francois Jacques' ballroom dancing lessons are held daily from 7 to 9 p.m. 1484 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd., Hallandale. The cost is $40 a month.
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Welcome to New Millennium Ballroom, you are visitor number...... |
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In 2007, with New Partner his brother: Jean-Marie Robert Jacques; Francois is proud to continue with his dreams of providing better service to the communities of South Florida and abroad. |
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