Classroom classes will only take place live with participants at the tanzhaus. Should it no longer be possible to continue the face-to-face classes due to pandemic restrictions, the remaining dates would be cancelled.
Argentine tango has been a constant source of fascination for more and more people around the world for many years. The tanzhaus nrw tango team, consisting of Jost Budde, Stefanie Pla Pérez, Andrea Stegmaier and Mareike Focken, has developed a distinctive teaching method that enables participants to dance freely from the first class on. Their style is informed by many long nights in Buenos Aires’ Milongas, while they join traditional elements with modern influence, the so-called neo tango or tango nuevo tendencies in the younger generation of dancers. Their well-founded classes bring the “connection with the partner” to the fore, or, as Jost puts it, “couple dancing in embrace”.
In this, tango resembles an “open source system”: “We convey technical foundations and movement principles as tools or building blocks for individual development,” according to Mareike. Accordingly, improvisation and creativity are very important: Argentine tango always emerges within each separate moment, through embrace and the desire to move harmoniously to the music. “Due to the lack of a strict sequence of steps, all senses are called for, and only paying one hundred percent attention to the partner will yield a harmonious flow in movement,” says Stefanie.
Andrea adds that the aim of the classes lies in “refining the dance couple’s communication. With this, the ability to interpret the music even more individually, more in improvisation, more directly, will grow, and a dynamic variety of movement will be reached. High-level tango dancing leads to a merging within the couple and the music, in which every moment is irretrievable and so one hundred percent authentic.”
