Tango Mojo BA Faculty Overview

It’s my pleasure to introduce a Porteño teaching couple who will complement my musicality teaching, enrich your BA experience, and wonderfully influence your dancing. 

Alberto Barsellini and Lis Dorin (known as “Lis y Beto”) win multiple awards year after year for their performance of Salon Tango (Tango de Pista). Alberto and I have been in close communication for several months and I so appreciate his professionalism and his teaching values! You can see two of their performance videos on their individual Tango Mojo Buenos Aires Faculty page, where you can also read a special message from them.

Alberto and Lis’s role in our BA tango retreat is to teach men’s and women’s technique, and be my collaborators in our cutting edge Musicality Laboratory - the improvisational practice portion of my daily musicality classes on our BA retreat.

Another new Porteña faculty member is my good friend and colleague, Laura Grinbank. We had a great time running the Tango Mojo retreat together in 2016. Laura’s specialization is men’s and women’s technique in continuous, close embrace. Laura dances and teaches both roles. She always works one-on-one with her students, even in group classes, using the body contact of close embrace to receive information about her students’ dancing and transmit the most important part of her teaching. Laura’s teaching hours will especially complement my “Tango in a Square Meter” sessions for dancing in crowded milongas. If close embrace is an area of your tango that you feel needs improvement, our classes with Laura will give you a breakthrough. If you’re already a good close-embrace dancer, but want to dance more like a BA native, Laura will help you make that shift.

Laura is also the most wonderful milonga host and guide I have ever met. My students have great fun with her guidance in milongas and so do I. She loves to introduce international tangueros and tangueras to her friends so they can dance together. Therefore, I have asked Laura to be our host at a some of our milongas, especially where people attend in groups of friends, rather than with the formal, separate seating for women and men.

Visit Laura’s individual Tango Mojo faculty page to read more about her tango background and watch two videos including one in which she’s dancing with the late, legendary Tete Rusconi!

Marcela Trape - Tango Body Awareness. A lifelong dance professional, Marcela has become Buenos Aires’ top expert on the body’s most natural and healthy ways to move for tango. She has guided tango dancers to gently release blocks and move more fluidly. I study with her regularly in Buenos Aires, as recommended by my own teacher. We will start with one group class in Marcela’s studio and see if our members want to take it further. A class with Marcela is, for me and for many others, a beautiful experience. 

To learn more about Marcela’s important work for tango dancers, from students to world class professionals, please visit her individual Tango Mojo Buenos Aires Faculty page, where you can also take her Body Awareness self-assessment, at the bottom of the page. 

Maria Lelia Ivanovich - our professional tour guide and a milonguera at night! She is another close friend whom I cherish for her beautiful heart. She brings her soulful intellect to every kind of city visit - cultural, historical, artistic, political, and of course, tango. I can never get enough of her insights about her city, her country, and tango. And yet she’s as happy to take people to a folklore festival, on a river boat trip, or even shopping as she is in discussing the important political stories that shaped the culture of the city. 

Maria Lelia’s gift as a tour guide is zeroing in on her guests’ genuine interests and curiosity. She has prepared for us an impressive list of options and is open to any requests by our participants. We won’t have time for many hours of tourism but since we have a small group, we can decide together how to spend our non-tango hours. And we’re sure to spend one Thursday night with Maria Lelia at her favorite tango hangout, Gricel. You can read Maria Lelia’s personal message on her individual Tango Mojo BA Faculty page.

Return to “Buenos Aires Musicality Intensive & Tango Immersion“