Charlotte Rivero (Stockholm)

Charlotte is the founder of queer tango in Sweden. She started with same sex courses 2000 with exchange of roles & partners. These courses were later 2005 connected to queer theory and named queer tango. The first official queer tango course in Sweden was given 2005.

She presented her concept of queer tango pedagogy/teaching at the international dance research conference NOFOD, Stockholm Jan 2006. She runs a queer tango school, Tangoverkstan - Roles in Motion, in Stockholm and organizes the annual Stockholm International Queer Tango Festival since 2007, the second queer tango festival in the world.

Charlotte has also been teaching/performing/giving talks at different parts of Sweden and abroad both in straight and queer communities in: Russia, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Argentina, USA, England & Germany and the queer tango festivals in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires and San Francisco.

Her work with developing queer tango/gender/ norm critical pedagogy is acknowledged by official institutions in Sweden. She works as an invited guest teacher with tango & queer/gender theory at the University of Lund: Malmö Theatre Academy, University of Gothenburg: Academy of Music and Drama, Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts, Stockholm University of Dance and Circus and The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR).

The emphasis in teaching is based on dynamic movements, musicality & improvisation, presence in the moment, connection & communication with awareness of power relations and gender structures. In the teaching exploration and play with roles is essential: from clear roles, clear exchanges of roles to more sliding/open/improvised roles.

The pedagogy is based on gender/queer theory, norm critcal thinking, problem based learning and empowerment.
Tangoverkstan

Sabine Berge (Stockholm)

Sabine, originally from Germany, started her leading experiences very early. She knows both roles, loves to dance in a close embrace and to music with energy. When a milonga is up she likes to lead! Sabine is very much inspired by Susanna Miller´s teaching of Milonguero style. She has been teaching together with Charlotte Rivero on several occasions since 2001. They have been teaching/performing at Stockholm Queer Tango Festival and Copenhagen Queer Tango Festival and at Stockholm Pride Festivals. Sabine is since a long time an appreciated instructor and well known tango profile in Stockholm and world wide visiting International Tango Festivals. Her focus in teaching is connection, embrace, quality of movements, feeling and flow.

Sergio Segura (Buenos Aires/NYC)

Sergio Segura from Buenos Aires now living in New York, is a professional performer, choreographer and a dedicated tango teacher and dancer. He is also a producer of large-scale Argentine Tango shows and events via Sergio Segura Tango Productions founded 2003.

In 2007, Sergio founded his dance school Strictly Tango NYC. As a teacher he was inspired by Antonio Todaro, Raul Bravo, Juan Carlos Copes, Gloria y Eduardo Arquimbau, Los Dinzel, Pepito Avellaneda, Miguel Zotto, Osvaldo Zotto, Rodolfo Cieri, El Aleman, Juan Bruno, Pupy Castello, Virulazo y Elvira, among other milongueros. He studied intensively with the Broadway stars Nelson Avila, Claudio Villagra and Romina Levin.

Sergio has produced Tango Teaching DVDs, which have sold all over the world. As a performer of tango, he is widely praised for his unique interpretations of tango music using traditional techniques. He and his partner, the NYC burlesque star Medianoche, are one of the most exciting and captivating tango couples of New York.

In 2009, he founded the Rainbow Tango group, offering LGBT friendly tango classes, parties and events including milongas at the LGBT Community Center, Splash Bar, and at several other NYC venues.

In 2010, he organized the 1st NYC International Queer Tango Festival. It was a major event in the city featured in the New York Times and Revista VIVA of Buenos Aires.

Sergio has also collaborated with The Argentine Tango Society in several projects for example tango shows and he leads "The Tango Preservation Project", one of the largest video collections of tango dance videos in the world. Rainbow Tango NYC

Ute Walter (Hamburg)

Ute Walter belongs to the first generation of European Tango teachers by gaining experiences for more than 25 years of dancing and teaching. Ute runs her own School „nuevas milongueras“ in Hamburg and works as instructor also nationwide/internationally (workshops in Switzerland, Sweden, Danmark, the Netherlands, Argentina, USA). The emphasis of her teaching is as well as her scientifical work in the relation of Tango to mindfulness, dialog and gender. She has got education and experience in several methods of mindfulness training for many years. Her passion for music and structure, her sharp analytical view are determent for her non curlicue and empathetic teaching style as well as her special didactic ability to prepare the most difficult themes.
She works furtheron with Tango and mindfulness in leadershipseminars and communicationtrainings. Ute is regulary invited with her concept by institutions of Germany like the Excellence Forum of the renowned German School Award and various important Congresses for Psychotherapy. Just started inclusive Tangoprojects for people with and without visual impairments and for people with disorders from the Autism spectrum. She created the term „queer tango“ and is one of the initiators of the queer tango movement together with Marga Nagel and Felix Feyerabend and worked for many years on building the worldwide queer tango community.
www.queer-tango.de

Marc Vanzwoll (Boston)

Marc Vanzwoll (Marc SFQueerTanguero) is recognized as a queer tango resource, organizer and activist. One of his focus areas is integrating queer and mainstream tango communities. He is passionate about Argentine Tango, and encourages everyone to participate.

To this end, he has performed queer tango to both LGBT and mainstream audiences, has won several queer tango dance competitions within the SF Bay Area.

Recently based in Boston, Marc occasionally consults and teaches at Queer Tango Boston.

From the various tango styles that he's encountered while training, Marc values most the tango connection, quality of movement and simplicity, follower's technique, musicality, and floor craft. The objective when he teaches is to share these same values with his students.

Within the last years he created the Gay Men’s Argentine Tango Classes and Sweet Inspiration Tango in the Castro.

Marc has been hands on in developing and organizing queer tango community projects both autonomously and involving organizations that include Queer Tango Boston, the NYC Queer Tango Festival 2010, Queer Tango San Francisco, and the Bay Area Argentine Tango Association.

In 2011 he served as a panelist addressing “The Relationship between Queer Being and Queer Consciousness” at the International Queer Tango Festival Hamburg.

Thierry Guénin
Tobias Svenningsen (Ottawa)

Thierry Guénin, who recently settled in Ottawa. He met Tobias Svenningsen in Buenos Aires during the first Queer Tango Festival in 2007. Since, they have been dancing and teaching tango together. They were among the initiators of Oslo Tango Queer (Norway). They were also part of the first Queer tango festival in Mexico this summer. They like to focus on communication, musicality and last but not least, relaxing and having fun while dancing. In 2010, Thierry took the initiative to organise Friends, fjord and tango, the first international Queer Tango Festival in Norway.

Nancy Lavoie (Québec)

Nancy Lavoie discovered Argentine tango while teaching piano. Inspired, she pursued tango training in Montréal and went on to sharpen her skills in Québec and abroad in Buenos Aires with well-known masters, including classic tango master Pepito Avellaneda, Pupy Castillo, Carlos Gavito, Tété and Sylvia and Ramiro Gigliotti.

She also trained with nuevo tango dancers Pablo Inza, Pablo Veron and Mauricio Castro. In 2002, she became a certified Master Teacher at Tango Discovery.

In 1995, she founded L’Avenue Tango, the first school of argentine tango in Québec City.

The following year, she brought together a troop of dancers and gave her two first performances, marking the beginnings of a long series of performances. Since then, she has danced on stages worldwide with local and argentine singers and groups.

In Buenos Aires, she and Alberto Goldberg created the first group of “Tango Improv” at the origin of the Cambalache festival of Buenos Aires. She was invited to participate in the same festival in 2011, where she taught and danced Tango Ecstasy accompanied by her partner Karen Goudreault.

Nancy Lavoie also founded the first group of power tango in 2001. Nancy is the creator of Queer Tango in Québec City 2011. Since one year, Avenue Tango offers a Queer Tango class, where the students can learn both roles. This class is very popular and opens the doors to more gender diversity in Québec.

Cristiano Bramani (Rome)

Cristiano Bramani has a background as a classical ballet dancer. After short period in roman ballet company he travelled to Buenos Aires and becomes keen on Tango and latin american folk-dance. He studies argentinian, colombian and mexican folk-dance. He travels around Italy and Europe dancing in a colombian and mexican folk company.

He develops his Tango travelling between Rome and Buenos Aires. His way of dance ranges over milonguero, salon and "nuevo" and he builds a personal and eclectic style. He started to dance as a leader and after some time he also discovered and learned the role of the follower.

Believing that tango offers the possibilities to express your self freely and equally, his way of teaching focus on knowledge of both roles. His work focus on mutual listening, sensitivity expansion and the skill to guide and follow regardless of role, in order that each one can express himself and his feelings in tango, in a dialogue, a complete mutual connection.

Cristiano started teaching tango 2004. Since 2009 he is the only one in Italy to offer regular tango queer class, in cooperation with BALLOROMO, GLBT partner dance roman association. He is the "Tango-queer Roma" project organizer, bringing tango queer in most important milongas in Rome, involving promoters, teachers and dancers of "traditional" tango channel. He is coming to the festival with Andrea Cesarini, roman dancer and teacher, who often join him in Tango-queer projects.

Andrea Cesarini (Rome)

From 1990 he began studying and practicing Martial Arts Tae Kwon Do and Kung-fu. Later he attended courses in modern dance and theater workshops. Finally he discover and arrives at the Tango Argentino.

Andrea began a course of study with Ali Namazi and Eliana Montanari and Marcelo Alvarez and Sabrina Amato. Meanwhile, attending seminars with high-level international masters such as Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne, Mariano "Chicho" Frumboli and Juana Sepulveda, Javier Rodriguez and Andrea Missé, Pablo Inza and Eugenia Parrilla, Pablo and Dana Villarraza Frigoli, Adrian and Alejandra Hobert Veredice, Gustavo Rosas and Gisela Natoli.

The method of instruction, careful to the technical component of class issues focused on solving problems of the individual.

Andrea is a teacher at the Center of the Argentine Tango in Rome, working with Cristiano Bramani in the project Roma Tango Queer.

Matthew Grubler (New York)

Bronze medal USA Tango championship and Strictly Tango Co. captain.

Matt is thrilled to be a part of the School of Traditional Argentine Tango founded by Sergio Segura. He enjoy dancing both roles and also like to perform. The school organized NYC Queer Tango Festival 2010 where Matt performed.

Over the past few years, Matt has consistently trained in both social and performance tango under the tutelage of Sergio Segura and Anton Gazenbeek. He is the captain of “Strictly Tango Dance Co”, and with the company, he accompanying famous tango starts like Claudio Villagra, Romina Levin, Los Hermanos Macana and Nelson Avila & Madalyn Klein. His teachers were Sergio Segura, Anton Gazenbeek, Nelson Avila, Claudio Villagra and Romina Levin.

Currently he is continuing his devotion to the art of Tango as a teacher at the “Strictly Tango NYC” dance school which is organizing NYC Open Role Tangofestival 2012 in October.

NYC Open Role Tango Festival 2012

Karen Goudreault (Québec)

Karen Goudreault was initiated in power tango in 2004, and then she pursued in argentine and nuevo tango taught by Nancy Lavoie. For some years, she improved with argentine masters invited to Quebec and to Montreal.

To 2006 to 2009, always wanting to innovate, she launched into the circus. At the same time and still today, she broadened artistics horizons by development of modern dance. First, she dances for the troop of l’Avenue Tango and later she participate in several shows for large-scale events to Quebec and Montreal such as Cirque du Soleil and Festival International de Tango Nuevo de Montréal.

Since summer 2009, she taught alongside Nancy Lavoie and this collaboration led to the creation of a new duo. Last december, they have been presented a choreography at the time of Festival Cambalache of Buenos Aires.

Karen is a seasoned and passionate dancer who knows how to touch by her presence, her creativity and her originality. She misses no opportunity to enrich her tango by incorporating harmonious other dance styles.