Who are you on the dance floor? What does this liminal space allow us to embody or cast off? How can we move through the tension between who we are, who we once were, and who we long to be? And what does it look like to do this together, in relationship with the other moving members of this ecosystem?

 

Together, we’ll engage with standard tango choreography and learn about the varied musical and cultural influences which shape the dance’s origins and evolution. We’ll better understand how the desire to assert power and pursue passion in the face of loss and othering has motivated ballroom styles across cultures, using this context to explore how we might break from or expand upon tango’s traditions with reverence and intention. Through movement, we’ll consider the hotbed of tensions which defined tango’s birth in the newly industrialized, late 19th century Buenos Aires, and explore the pursuit of glamor which colored the instructor’s study of ballroom dance as a first generation American of Russian descent.