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Rating: 
Summary: More Than Just a Story
Review: "Let It Be a Dance" is an extraordinary little book that has universal appeal. It transcends age, culture, and education and goes straight to the heart! At first blush this is an honest and touching autobiography of one man's life journey. The stories feel warm, ordinary, and hauntingly familiar. Calabria's descriptions are simple yet exquisitely vibrant. He speaks in pictures that enable the reader to literally envision his memories as if watching an old time movie. He paints an image of the neighborhood where he grew up that is so vivid you can almost see the houses, hear the music and smell the aromas of an Italian family meal. It is a pleasure to read this story. Calibria is able to draw out your emotions as if he were playing a musical instrument. His wit is quick, unexpected, and hilarious. In an instant his stories can move you to unexpected tears or crack you up with laughter. This is a book that is likely to have a profound impact on it's reader but at the very least, everyone will enjoy the read and wish that Frank Calabria was their grandfather. The magic of "Let It be a Dance" is that the author has managed to make the insignificant significant. He reflects on his life experiences with such deep respect that the ordinary becomes profound. Awesome stuff! His lesson is simple yet possibly life-altering. Learn to treasure both the sweet and the bitter sights, sounds and hidden memories of your life. Calabria is a master teacher; his lesson is there for the taking.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read Book
Review: Frank Calabria's autobiography reads like a valentine to life. It exudes a joie de vivre rarely encountered in these more cynical times. Calabria enjoys the hand which Fate has dealt him, and he plays it with finesse and obvious pleasure. One is seldom given the opportunity to see so clearly into an extended family. Without hiding any faults, foibles, failures and even embarrassments, which he examines, explains, and when necessary, tolerates, Calabria amuses the reader with droll descriptions of comic incidents and humorous characters. He takes a witty slant when describing events and cleverly relates the droll responses of his family members, friends, students or himself. A retired psychology professor and psychotherapist, Calabria's profession gave him the objectivity and perspicacity to see his life as the product of ethnic immigration and assimilation. Cerebral as his career may be, no one would accuse Calabria of mind/body dualism. He is quite conscious of and sensitive to his own body, its size, color, shape and ability to move and dance; and, he used this sensitivity to construct what must have been enjoyable courses in humanistic psychology and the psychology of creativity. These courses and his "theatre of the mind" teaching approach probably made him a popular professor at Union College in Schenectady, NY. Calabria's choice of chapter titles reveals his amusing sense of humor:
'My Family, Warts and All'
'Cathocicism: Being a Factory Second' - McDougall Street "street games, flirting girls, peep show erotics and hot jazz were an aphrodisiac to an alar boy not yet weaned from the Mother Church," Calabria writes. Irreligious or not, the author gets things right when he describes Eve as an early feminist standing up for her right to eat the apple.
'Family Loves, Family Feuds' - As an ignored caller, Calabria's mother circled a cousin's house, called in a window when she sighted the snubbing cousin and put her fist through the offending window when the cousin slammed it in her face. "My mother was not one to take lightly what she considered an insult or an offense."
'Marriage and Family: A Complete Education' While the author claims that music is the artform which gives him the most pleasure, dancing is his passion. Ballroom dancing organizes his social life. The reader follows the young dance instructor from Brooklyn dance halls, a courtship and marriage united by dancing, and finally to a book about the dance marathons popuar in the 1920s and 30s. The material on dreams is probably the most interesting. I suspect it is Calabria's fresh, positive perspective on life which most enlivens this book. His wit and the spontaneity of his actions add the spice. It is a good read!
Rating:
Summary: A Life With Pizzazz
Review: Frank Mario Calabria is a man who defies his age and what can be done in life with pizzazz,a good mind and quick feet. It also helps to have a charming partner who lets you believe that you are leading the 'tango'. His book "Let It Be A Dance" tells the story of a brash young man torn with the hormones of youth and the strict upbringing of an old world Roman/Catholic Italian family. His life is one of hard work, joy and adventure, and some times misadventures. As he traces his family and his own history through the temptestuous times of the mid 20th century, he paints a canvass of life with vivid color and clear memory; perhaps according to Angela, his wife, too clear. One can find the passion of youth and the struggle to make a life that is above the ordinary. He does so with physical ability, charm and tenacity. His academic career, as a professor of psychology, is almost over shadowed by his passion for music and the wondrous ability to dance. Not the ordinary jazz and foxtrot of the forties, but all kinds of dance wherein he instructs the rhythmic nuances of motion to music. This literary effort takes the reader inside a passionate and quick mind. A must read for anyone that has ever tapped their toes to a tune and loved the chase as well as the catch .....
Rating:
Summary: From a graceful waltz to an exotic tango, it's all here.
Review: From a graceful waltz to an exotic tango, it can all be found in "Let it be a Dance." Frank's magical way with words delivers you to the very streets of his childhood, returns you to the uncertainties of adolescence, young love, adventure, and the marvels of fullfillment with career and family. His wit and honesty allows the reader to accompany him on his many heart felt adventures. I found myself gallantly reflecting and returning to times past, in my own life, and recognizing the splender of those times.
He travels a warm and uplifting journey through life's myriad of disappointsments, confussion, and exhilarating adventures, and invites us to come along. I couldn't put this page turner down. It was a gently reminder of all the warm and truely wonderful things life has offered all of us and how truely grateful I am to have had the opportunities to travel my own journey. If I am given a choice to sit it out or dance, I'll dance.
Rating:
Summary: From a graceful waltz to an exotic tango, it's all here.
Review: From a graceful waltz to an exotic tango, it can all be found in "Let it be a Dance." Frank's magical way with words delivers you to the very streets of his childhood, returns you to the uncertainties of adolescence, young love, adventure, and the marvels of fullfillment with career and family. His wit and honesty allows the reader to accompany him on his many heart felt adventures. I found myself gallantly reflecting and returning to times past, in my own life, and recognizing the splender of those times.
He travels a warm and uplifting journey through life's myriad of disappointsments, confussion, and exhilarating adventures, and invites us to come along. I couldn't put this page turner down. It was a gently reminder of all the warm and truely wonderful things life has offered all of us and how truely grateful I am to have had the opportunities to travel my own journey. If I am given a choice to sit it out or dance, I'll dance.
Rating:
Summary: KO'd by Mary McCarthy
Review: In this wonderfully rich autobiography of a second-generation Italian-American boy growing up, I laughed out loud as Frank relates the humiliating experience of being "beaten up" by, of all things, a girl....even while wearing his beloved aviator cap. This episode was told with such reality; I felt I was there and I rooted for him. Alas, he was KO'd by Mary. All of the endearing adventures he encounters are laced with wit and humor. He doesn't pull any punches (no pun intended) when he talks about the oddities and eccentricities of his beloved family. He waxes eloquently about them, even nasty Uncle Frank, the godfather to our author, and his comic aunt who brings laughter to the dinner table with her "machine" to produce the melodic sounds of flatulence. As an Italian-American, I could relate to so many of the funny and, sometime, poignant vignette's Frank describes. A must read and so dearly enjoyed, it will be done in one or two sittings. You will not be able to put it down until Frank closes with his views on the "afterlife".
Rating:
Summary: KO'd by Mary McCarthy
Review: In this wonderfully rich autobiography of a second-generation Italian-American boy growing up, I laughed out loud as Frank relates the humiliating experience of being "beaten up" by, of all things, a girl....even while wearing his beloved aviator cap. This episode was told with such reality; I felt I was there and I rooted for him. Alas, he was KO'd by Mary. All of the endearing adventures he encounters are laced with wit and humor. He doesn't pull any punches (no pun intended) when he talks about the oddities and eccentricities of his beloved family. He waxes eloquently about them, even nasty Uncle Frank, the godfather to our author, and his comic aunt who brings laughter to the dinner table with her "machine" to produce the melodic sounds of flatulence. As an Italian-American, I could relate to so many of the funny and, sometime, poignant vignette's Frank describes. A must read and so dearly enjoyed, it will be done in one or two sittings. You will not be able to put it down until Frank closes with his views on the "afterlife".
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