Family Focus
ON THE COVER
Dancing Through
The Decades
Shelli Liebman Dorfman
Senior Staff Writer
I
Allison Sherbet and Josh Ostschher,
both 11, of West Elloomfiela-get out
on the dance floor during a class.
t's not unusual for 11-year-old dance students at Joe Cornell Entertainment to
be literally following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents.
Since 1957, successive generations of bar and bat mitzvah-bound boppers at
Joe Cornell have been tutored in dance-floor grace and the social graces as a sort of
rite of passage.
And this family focused theme flows throughout the business.
To keep track of their family ties to the enterprise, brother and sister Steve Jasgur
of Birmingham and Rebecca Schlussel of West Bloomfield — who purchased it in
1991 — need a genealogy chart and a slew of relations with really good memories.
Aside from the current staff list that includes close relatives, their family history
at Joe Cornell goes back to the 1950s when their mom's cousins took lessons in the
basement of their home from the business' founder, Joe Cornell.
And although they've been the owners for just 15 of its 50 years, Steve and
Rebecca have connections with Joe Cornell Entertainment that go right back to the
official opening of Joe's first studio in a storefront on Wyoming in Detroit, where
their mother, Harriet Jasgur, danced in one of the original classes. And Harriet, now
of West Bloomfield, distinctly remembers how Joe emceed her brother Gary Docks'
bar mitzvah.
Acknowledging the golden anniversary of what has become a local institution, Joe
Cornell noted, "They're still teaching dancing and manners just like I always did:'
Joe Cornell on page 28
January 18 = 2007
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