Tucson Tango Fall Fest

The friendliest tango festival just expanded! The Tucson Tango Fall Fest is now open for registrations!

2 for 1 Registration for Fall Fest

Save $140 — $280 for two full passes! (Retail $280 for one pass!)


Click here and get a 2 for 1 offer and save $140!!

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Yes! If you are flying solo you can register without a partner for $155

Quantity:
$155 each

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Go here:For More Information: TucsonTangoFallFest.com

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Instructors

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Diego Blanco and Ana Padron

Award-winning Argentine Tango dancers Diego Blanco and Ana Padron are one of the top performing young couples in the world today. Their tango style is energetic, rhythmical, and innovative, and through their fluid moves they fuse nuevo tango with the close embrace look of traditional tango. They co- founded their dance company, Tango for All, to bring this electrifying tango to audiences in America and throughout the world.

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Ney Melo and Ellinor Westrup

World-renowned tango dancer and teacher Ney Melostarted in the New York City and Buenos Aires tango scenes, learning from the old milongueros and dancing every night in the milongas. Ney is a dedicated to inspiring students to dance tango with feeling, musicality, cadencia, and connection – the way it is danced in Buenos Aires. The atmosphere in his classes is relaxed, personable and lively, and he places equal emphasis on the lady’s role as the man’s. Technique and the essence of tango, both fundamental to dancing well, are stressed in whatever step is being shown. His instruction is highly respected and sought out by beginning and advanced dancers, as well as other teachers and choreographers.

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Brian Nguyen and Yuliana Basmajyan

Brian and Yuliana crossed paths at a milonga in 2007. Together they travel to Argentina a few times a year to continue their tango education with maestros. They’ve taught and performed in several festivals and milongas such as El Congreso in Toronto, Valentango in Portland, Tango MundoFestival in Palm Springs, Mercury Cafe in Denver and La Nacional, Ukraine, and Nocturne Milongas in NYC. They are the 2011 U.S. Tango Champions in Tango Salon, and they took 3rd place in Tango Mundial 2011 Salon Category, the annual world competition held in Buenos Aires. You can find them at Oxygen tango school in Los Angeles where they teach group classes on Monday nights.

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Jay Abling and Mary Fu

Mary has persistently studied Argentine tango with both body and mind since she first fell in love with it as a college student in South America. The biggest influences to her understanding and practice of the dance are drawn from world-renowned tango dancers and teachers Gustavo Naveira & Giselle Anne, Julio Balmaceda & Corina de la Rosa, and Graciela Gonzalez. She continues to exercise and push the boundaries of their teachings through her new partnership with J. Abling.

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DJs

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Jay Abling

Jay loves to DJ and his tandas have been known to melt butter in refrigerators three states away! J Abling believes that a milonga is a “party where tango is danced”. Whenever he DJs, he intends to keep a good party going with select choice of music to inspire both lovers of traditional and alternative music. When not teaching or DJing, he is constantly organizing and listening to his music or looking for more music to add to his extensive collection. He has learned to dj from some of the best DJs in the country including Jaimes Friedgen, Alex Krebs, Dan Boccia, Shorey Myers and Vijay. He has DJd at festivals and regular milongas in Portland, Seattle, Houston, New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Maui and Ashland, OR.

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Paul Akmajian

Paul Akmajian (Albuquerque, NM) has been dancing tango for over 10 years and teaching for the last five. He has been a DJ for most of his tango life and in the last 3 years he has DJ’d in Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson, as well as on a regular basis in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Recently, he was a DJ for the Denver > Albuquerque Labor Day weekend Tango Festival. He is excited to return to his hometown of Tucson to DJ for the Tucson Tango Festival.

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Kenny Bell

Shortly after starting tango, Kenny found himself not only consumed with the dance, but he had also fallen into a deep obsession with the music. Since then, he has spent countless hours not only listening to these golden age classics, but studying them. He focuses not only on orchestra leaders, but also on singers and time periods, listening to the subtle differences of eras, styles, and instrumentals, finding out what makes each orchestra unique and what unifies them, as well as what makes a good dance song and what doesn’t.

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Varo Biagi

As an avid dancer himself, Varo has a deep appreciation for tango music as a crucial part of the overall milonga experience for each dancer. As a DJ, Varo strives to create a musical atmosphere that inspires dancers and connects with them on the emotional level. While DJ-ing, Varo is always connected to the dancers-either by observing the energy and the interactions of the dancefloor, or dancing in the middle of it. In addition to selecting good tango songs, Varo pays detailed attention to the structure of the playlist.

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Joanne Canalli

Jo’s DJ philosophy is a product of her personal Tango journey as a follower and, recently, a leader. Although her beginnings came from Alternative/Nuevo Jo has evolved over time to develop a deep passion and love for the traditional Argentine Tango music specifically, the Golden Age era. She prepares 100% traditional tandas concentrating on fully danceable music with a mix of the playful, the romantic, the high energy, the sweet and melodic, with maybe a touch of drama. Her goal is for the dancers to leave the milonga with a happy heart, a satisfied craving and an eagerness for more.

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Vincent Wong

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10 Ways to Make Most of Your Tango Festival Experience

10 Ways To Get The Most of YOUR Festival

1) Stay hydrated

Drink plenty of water! Our top priority being the the desert is hydration… we convey this to the hotel. The water should never be low at our drinking stations, please drink freely – especially if you are consuming alcohol!

2) Bring a Snack…

We will be providing breakfast at the all night milonga Saturday, but the rest of the milongas run late as well. Be sure you don’t wind up low on blood sugar. Bring a protein bar or some trail mix to help boost your energy.

3) Get plenty of rest.

Take a nap after classes if you are studying all day and dancing all night you will quickly get exhausted. Be sure to plan your times around resting times or more sedentary activities. We have lectures and DJ classes and music jams that will keep you in the festivities while allowing you to rest. If you have class passes think about observing a class as opposed to participating (you need a class pass to be in a classroom!) you might be surprised how much you can learn by watching the efforts of others and listening to the instruction.

4) Ask and Tell!

Ask your tango partner if they are comfortable with your dancing. Ask if there is anything you can do to make them more comfortable. They may be looking for a different style than you are offering. Lay down your ego and connect with the human heart in your arms!

Tango is a dance that is taught differently in different places. Even in Buenos Aires differing barrios use different techniques. This is true, after 10 years and over 60 different instructors (many of which I have hired) I know it first hand! The solution is to find the person. Find the man or woman in your arms. Do not make the dance at the milonga about the technique of style, make it about hte person in your arms and you will find a wider range of joy and success in your connections.

5) Floor Craft!

Minding the line of dance is lot like considerate driving, keep an eye on traffic!

• Mind the space behind to the sides and in front of you. Respect the space of others, do not let a step or move be more important than your dance mates.
• If there is a gap in front of you you are moving to slow.
• Yield  to on coming dancers.
• Do Not Pass.  As a general rule there is no hurry so stay in your lane.  At the same time, you might want to immediately select an inner lane.  Or change lanes because traffic is piling up during peak hours, in such a case, be sure to look before changing lanes.
• Keep a comfortable buffer.  Like with cars, keeping a respectable distance from the person in front of you helps a lot.  Do not tailgate
• If you feel inclined to dance lots of circular moves try the center of the floor where you will find more room and smaller circular flow.
• Take care of your follower.  Keep an eye out if someone near you is wild but a buffer and your back between them and your partner.
• Be selective when entering the floor.  Pick someone you know to follow if possible – it immediately amplifies the empathy factors.

They say millions of locust can fly through an area and never have a collision… if a locust can do it so can we!

6) Watch look and Learn…

When I was new to festivals I would frequently I get in so much of a hurry to get another partner for the next tanda that I would forget how beautiful this dance is to watch. Take a tanda or two during each night to absorb the beautiful dancing. Notice the musicality – how frequently the heads all seem to pause together during a phrase change of the music. Notice the intricacies of floor-craft. Look for the advanced dancer and see what you can get by the magical visual osmosis that is very powerful in the tango dance community. We invite instructors that dance at our events, watch them as they go by and allow these to be moments of inspiration.

Never feel as though you need every tanda to fulfill your festival needs, a lot of joy and learning comes from watching of this beautiful art form.

7) Give a Moment to Someone Else…

Ask anyone that has been around tango for a few years and they will tell you that at any given moment you are surrounded by future friends. There is magic in the abrazo I have seen it, felt it and been the recipient of it myself many times; there is a healing and bonding energy that transpires when you spent full tandas in someone’s arms, frequently you become very good friends. Tango communities are built on a global, national and regional level very similar to how they are made locally: by taking the time to be kind.

Take a moment to look around the room and give a tanda to a new face, a sad face or a lonely face. There is a very good chance that you will be rewarded ten fold in years to come. It is easy to be in the mind set that we have spent hundreds of dollars to travel and dance so we want all we can get from the experience and we should do just that… but… The small kindnesses that we offer can frequently come back to us in wonderful loving rewards. Take a moment and connect with a new person!

We all want instant community, but remember community is built and encouraged by the investments of kindness that made all this happen.

Stretch and Move…

Keep your body in shape! We have free yoga classes every morning. There is reflexology and foot massage machines in our venue. Make use of all of these. Use any tricks of stretching or exercising that you have learned in tango or other disciplines. Listen to pain, it will frequently tell you something is wrong and that you need to rest or change your movement strategies.
Remember the body is resilient; answer the call of your body and take good care to take good care of yourself!

9) From one of our Readers:

“The best advice I every received was to dance with every partner with an open, loving heart. I cant tell you how much of a difference that made for me…. eases nerves, makes you happy; and you emanate so much positive energy that your partner cant resist “falling in love” right back for the 12 minutes of the tanda. ”

Thank you, Sue!!!

10 ) Drop us a Line…

Tell us how we can enhance your experience. We are here and we work hard to make your festival experience the best it can be. We love everything tango Argentino all suggestions are welcome.

Thank you for gracing us with your presence!

Love & Light,
Rusty

Jorge Nel Join’s Tucson Tango Festival

Jorge Nel will be joining us at the Tucson Tango Festival!!!

Jorge will be teaching a milonga workshop at the festival!! You must catch this fabulous instructor/performer in person. I assure you it will change your milonga dancing for ever!!

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Sunday, March 18, 2pm-4pm

$30 in advance/$40 at the door

REGISTER HERE

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Jorge Nel Giraldo, professor of physical education and dance in his country of Colombia, he is considered one of the best instructors of tango dance in the United States since he has been teaching and dancing for over 30 years.

The city of Miami has given him a proclamation naming the 15th of May as
“Jorge Nel Day” for being the pioneer of tango in Florida.

He has participated in films dancing tango, one of the films is Random Hearts with Harrison Ford, another film with Celia Cruz and Al Pacino. Jorge directed his own dance company, Tango Fever, for over 10 years.

He was the last dancer acting alongside Libertad La Marque, diva of the Hispanic cinema and Jorge was one of the first tango entrepreneurs to start the Tango Festivals in the United States.

At present he is considered one of the best salon tango dancers in his country and is currently well recognized in the United States as one of the best Milonga dancers in the USA.

Jorge Nel Milonga Boot Camp

Jorge Nel – Sandra Milena Buitrago – Andres Bravo

Sunday 2 hours – See Schedule

Quantity:

$30 each

At the Door Price = $40

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This also means the Jorge Nel Shoes will be available for sale at the festival!!

Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:30 am.

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