ABOUT US
When we set up our dance school for Argentine tango we hoped that we would be teaching together into our golden years. Since then Fate has taken a hand in matters and this year Oliver has had to stop teaching for a time to recover from a strange illness. Recover he does, but we expect that to be a slow process needing a lot of rest and peace – not always things that you find in tangoland...
In the meantime I have been very lucky to find other wonderful teaching partners to work with: Eva de Kleer, Isolde Kanikani and Michael Lavocah. Eva and Isolde teach with me regularly in Gouda (and further afield in the Netherlands), Isolde and Michael teach with me internationally.
Eva started lessons in Gouda with Oliver when she was 14 years old and since then has single–mindedly set out to learn with some of the best–respected teachers in the Netherlands. Both she and Isolde, like many of the younger generation of tango dancers, learned to lead and follow, and can switch roles effortlessly, which brings another perspective into their teaching. Isolde and Michael are both experienced teachers with a well–developed personal style of dancing and teaching. They have their own websites which you can see by clicking on their names.
BIOGRAPHIES
Although she originally trained as an artist, Siobhan has danced for most of her life in one form or another – ballet, jazz and modern dance. When she discovered Argentine tango in 1999 she realised that it was the dance for her. Since then she has travelled to learn with many tango maestros – some famous, some less so – and continues to seek out new teachers and influences as her experience of tango evolves.
Oliver trained as an actor, and discovered tango more than 20 years ago. Taught by one of the best–loved Argentine teachers, Pepito, he started to teach tango himself 15 years ago. Since then he has taught tango in Germany and the Netherlands, and has also run his own tango studio, broadcast for Radio Tango, developed a one–man show based on a story by Borges, and DJ–ed in tango salons across Europe. He met Siobhan in El Corte in Nijmegen and in short order they married, set up their home in Gouda, and started to teach the dance they both love together.
Our dancing style? Well it’s still evolving as we learn more about tango, and more about dancing with each other – we hope it will be a lifelong process. We enjoy open and close embrace techniques equally, although we are most at home with salon tango and a close embrace dance, and we work with the whole spectrum of tango music from traditional to neo. Our dance is intense, full of feeling, graceful, with playful footwork. In our teaching we draw on a mix of tango influences, and on our different backgrounds: body psychotherapy and breath awareness – Siobhan, and Eurythmy and Michael Chekhov’s technique for actors – Oliver. Together we emphasise the intimacy of the connection between the couple, quality of movement, musicality, and sound technique as the basis for improvisation and play.
About Argentine Tango
Tango music and dance grew out of a melting pot of cultures in the Rio del Plata region of Argentina and Uruguay in the late 19th century. In the music diverse influences mingle: African candombe sits beside South American campero guitar rhythms, European walz is mixed with Cuban habanera and criollo sounds. The bandoneon (originally developed as a kind of portable church organ), imported from Germany, has become the hallmark of tango music, its characteristic wail expressing the yearning and aggression that is typical of classic tango songs.
The dance has evolved alongside the music, from its early roots in the bordellos of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, to the sophistication and variety of modern–day tango. Today Argentine tango is taught and danced in virtually every country, with international festivals, competitions, specially created shows, tango literature, magazines, websites, and a flourishing tango tourist industry. For the majority of tango dancers though it remains essentially what it always was: a social dance, a meeting between two people, a silent conversation between dancers, to music, in a salon.
Not to be confused with the European style of ballroom tango, Argentine tango is less about steps and set figures, and more about the contact between the dancers and the possibilities of moving together. Whether it is danced milonguero style, in close embrace, or in a more dynamic open embrace, the magic of the dance comes from the awareness that the dancers develop for each others’ movements, and the possibilities of playing and improvising with a number of basic dance techniques.
