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Argentine Tango

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Contributed by: Jerry Tangos on 5/25/2007

Argentine Tango!

Passionate! Seductive! Romantic! Intense! ...

Everyone who sees it, is tempted by it. Yet, Argentine tango nearly died, twice; the second time in the 1970's and 80's. It's a long story, and the history is quite rich and colorful, but the tango is having a decisive resurgence; a new life. And this time, all over the world people are dancing it, not just in Europe and South America. Right here in our corner of the globe, the resurgence of the Argentine Tango (quite distinct from American and ballroom tango) is best exemplified in the growing number of dancers and events, like the weekly and monthly milongas that did not exist even 2 years ago. (A Milonga is an Argentine tango social dance).

In Ventura county, every Wednesday there are 3 hours of classes and practice, and on the third Saturday of each month there is a milonga. This all happens in a dance ballroom whose charm and friendliness is unparalleled, not only in Southern California, but all over the country: Laurel's Hilltop Ballroom (6470 La Cumbre Road, in Somis). The architects of these events are the members of the Argentine Tango Club of Ventura County, who back in November of 2005 invited two superbly-trained, award-winning Argentine tango teachers and dancers from Santa Barbara, Fardad Michael Serry and Julie Stillman . Several of the dancers from Ventura county got tired of having to drive all the way up to Santa Barbara to study with them week after week. So, they asked, and Serry and Stilman who had already established an impressive track record in Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and San Diego, agreed to travel south to Somis for the weekly classes, and the tango in Ventura county has grown steadily and robustly ever since. And this year, another well-known tango couple started classes and milongas in Thousand Oaks: Orlando Paiva, Jr. and Laura Tate, who like Serry and Stillman are dedicated to growing the real Argentine Tango in Southern California.

After nearly two years of consistent, methodical approach to teaching by Serry and Stillman, and later by Paiva and Tate, and also by another fine instructor from Los Angeles, Michael Espinoza, the tango in Ventura county has become big enough that in June, two of the world's undisputed top tango masters from the birthplace of the tango, Buenos Aires, Argentina, will be visiting Laurel's Hilltop Ballroom, where they will be teaching two master workshops (June 6, 7). They are Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa , who are also the teachers of the local talent, Serry and Stillman. Balmaceda and de la Rosa will be teaching seven more workshops in Santa Barbara, as part of this series of events, which is their first and exclusive engagement in all of Southern California for the first time in the last 5 years--thanks to the persistent invitations extended to them over the last four years by Serry and Stillman, who are now hosting the Argentine masters in the southland. Blamaceda and de la Rosa are on their world tour that brings them to the US from Europe, and on their way to Taiwan and Korea next, before returning home to Argentina. The only other US cities on their world tour are San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and Austin.

"Immediately after I first announced Julio and Corina's engagement here on Southern California tango Yahoo! groups, I started receiving requests for saving space in their workshops from tango professionals as far away as San Diego, and from tango dancers as far away as Phoenix, and, if you can believe it, from Taiwan! But it turned out the dancer who emailed me from Taiwan was on a business trip there, she does not live in Taiwan, she lives in New York! My phone and my email box has not been so busy in the 11 years I've lived here!" exclaims Fardad Michael Serry, who just returned from a trip to Reno, Nevada, where he and Julie Stillman were invited for an engagement during which they taught five workshops and an educational seminar that included video demonstrations for the tango community in the Reno and Tahoe, CA area.

The culmination of the engagement by the masters Balmaceda and de la Rosa is a Grand Milonga in Santa Barbara on June 9th , in which they will perform for a crowd that is sure to pack the house. "People are coming to the workshops and to the Grand Milonga from up and down the coast, from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. The only reason we are not getting in calls from San Francisco," a major Argentine tango city in the US, second only to New York, "is that Blamaceda and de la Rosa will have an engagement there, in the most prestigious annual Argentine Tango festival in the US, Nora's San Francisco Tango Week," Serry explains.

Serry and Stillman teach group tango lessons every week in Somis (including for beginners), Santa Barbara, and Santa Ynez, and every Friday, they host the longest-running weekly milonga in all of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. For more information about Argentine Tango in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, visit the website

http://www.tangomilonga.biz or call (805) 884-1049.

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Jerry Tangos

Camarillo , CA

Jerry Tangos has posted 6 stories and 0 comments since joining on 5/17/2007. Jerry Tangos's average story rating is 3.5.

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