At Copenhagen Queer Tango Festival 2011, you will meet a number of talented tango teachers and dancers. They are all established names in the international queer tango community, and they all have many years of experience on the tango scene. Read descriptions of the teachers below.
Teachers:
Sabine Berge and Charlotte Rivero (S)
Daniela Feilcke-Wolff and Raimund Schlie (D)
Sabine Rohde and Bärbel Rücker (D/DK)
Helen "La Vikinga" Halldórsdóttir and Gunner Svendsen (Isl/Arg/DK)
DJ's:
Bärbel Rücker
Gunner Svendsen
Special guest:
Victor Hugo Diaz (Arg/DK)
TEACHERS
Sabine Berge
Sabine Berge (right on photo), 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 and performing at Stockholm Queer Tango Festival, Copenhagen Queer Tango Festival and at the Stockholm Pride Festivals. Sabine has been an appreciated instructor for a long time and is a well-known tango profile in Stockholm, and has visited International Tango Festivals, world wide. Her focus in teaching is connection, embrace, and quality of movements, feeling and flow.
Sabine will teach at the festival together with Charlotte Rivero on 2nd, 3rd and 4th September.
Charlotte Rivero
Charlotte Rivero (left on photo above) is the founder of Queer Tango in Sweden. She started with same-sex courses in 2000 with exchange of roles & partners. In 2005, these courses were connected to queer theory and named queer tango. The first official queer tango course in Sweden was given by her and Sabine Berge in 2005. Charlotte runs weekly queer tango courses at her dance school, Tangoverkstan – Roles in Motion, in Stockholm. She is the organizer of the annual Stockholm International Queer Tango Festival.
Charlotte has been teaching/performing/giving talks in straight and queer communities in a wide range of countries, from Russia to Argentina. Her work with developing queer tango/gender/norm critical pedagogy is acknowledged by official institutions in Sweden. She works as a guest teacher with tango & queer/gender theory at several universities and other institutions in Sweden.
Her emphasis in teaching is based on dynamic movements, musicality & improvisation, and presence, as well as connection & communication with awareness of power relations and gender structures. In her teaching, exploration and playing 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 critical thinking, problem based learning and empowerment.
Charlotte will teach at the festival together with Sabine Berge on 2nd, 3rd and 4th September.
More information: Charlotte Rivero and 'Tangoverkstan – Roles in Motion'
Daniela Feilcke-Wolff and Raimund Schlie
Daniela and Raimund started working together in 2005 during an extended stay in Buenos Aires, where they go regularly. They consider tango an "open access project" which makes people grow and discover a playful way to connect.
Their heart belongs to traditional tango where they find a perfect match of music, intention and movement. Using this tradition, Daniela and Raimund convey tango as an improvised social dance which offers a kaleidoscope of emotional and sensual possibilities. The way how they use the concept of "lead and follow" includes communication, awareness and exchange in an embraced movement.
Daniela and Raimund are working as tango teachers and DJs in Berlin, Germany, at Mala Junta and elsewhere on festivals and vacations.
Daniela and Raimund will teach at the festival on 2nd, 3rd and 4th September.
Sabine Rohde
Sabine has been dancing and teaching tango/milonga/tango vals for 26 years, both roles - and anything in between. She has organized, danced and taught with legends as Antonio Todaro, Pepito Avellaneda, Gustavo Naveira, Graciela Gonzalez, Helen La Vikinga. Latest work together with Bärbel Rücker, Ezequiel Farfaro and Graciela Gonzalez.
Sabine's ambition is to support the student in her/his own way to find the inner music, to encounter an effortless personal style and enjoy the connection to the partner, fellow dancers and dance space.
She's a trained Feldenkrais Practitioner with a background in modern dance and contact improvisation.
Sabine will teach at the festival together with Bärbel Rücker on 3rd and 4th September.
Bärbel Rücker
Bärbel has been dancing Tango since 1997, teaching since 1999, and touring throughout Europe as dancer and teacher since 2006. Between 2006 and 2009, Bärbel spent a total of 11 months in Buenos Aires, dancing, teaching, and developing her own style of Tango.
She has taught both on her own, as well as with Tango dancers, Henrik Uldall (DK), Riku Kotiranta (S), Nicolai Farver (DK), Rafael Busch (D), Sabine Rohde (D/DK) and Antonio Midiri (I). Bärbel teaches in Danish, English, and German.
Bärbel will teach at the festival together with Sabine Rohde on 3rd and 4th September.
More information: Bärbel Rücker | Tanzbar.
Helen "La Vikinga" Halldórsdóttir
Helen works with Argentinean tango as a dance, as an expression, but most of all as communication and as a connection to the partner, in both the leader's and follower's role.
Helen has been teaching for the past 10 years in Europe, Argentina and USA. She teaches everything from traditional to queer tango. The most important aspect for her is to be able to communicate to the partner and to enjoy the tango.
Helen started dancing both of the roles in tango early and became well-known as La Vikinga at the traditional milongas in Buenos Aires, and for dancing the "men's" role. In her own tango school in Buenos Aires, Escuela La Vikinga, she teaches tango and milonga for both groups and private classes.
Helen has organized milongas in both Sweden and Argentina: In Buenos Aires she arranged one of the first alternative milongas in Argentina, La Vikinga, and also Italia Unita, Rough, Bien Pulenta (the first gay friendly and smoke-free milonga in Argentina) as well as and Mano a mano (an open-minded traditional milonga) in Malmoe, Sweden, she arranged the milonga, Libertango.
Besides teaching, dancing and organizing tango events, Helen designs and produces her own La Vikinga brand of shoes and sneakers.
Helen will teach at the festival together with Gunner Svendsen on 1st, 3rd and 4th September.
More information: 'La Vikinga' - facebook page.
Gunnder Svendsen
Gunner Svendsen is a genuine tango pioneer in Denmark. He is one of the key figures behind the comeback of the Argentine tango we have seen in the last years. Back in 1991 he organized the first workshop with the original Argentine tango in Denmark, and since then he has taught and performed numerous places all over Denmark and abroad.
Gunner's tango is not linked to any particular style. He enjoys a lot dancing with a close embrace at the crowded dance floor, but he's also dancing a more classical and open style, sometimes with elements from show-tango and the style known as 'tango nuevo'. In his teaching the focus is primarily to give the participants skills to be able to go out and dance at the milongas, i.e. creating contact to the partner, listening to the music, improvise with a certain repertoire of steps and figures, and have fun at the dance floor.
Gunner will teach at the festival together with Helen 'La Vikinga' Halldórsdóttir on 1st, 2nd and 4th September as well as being DJ at the milongas 1st and 4th September.
DJ
Bärbel Rücker
DJ Bärbel Rücker | Tanzbar is an experienced DJ who has performed full evening music sets at Tango marathons, festivals, and milongas in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Hungary and Ukraine. She lives and teaches in Copenhagen.
Bärbel's approach to Tango DJ'ing includes songs mostly from the late 1920's, 1930's and 1940's. Always striving to create an inspiring atmosphere, and to maintain an effortless flow on the dance floor, Bärbel’s style is both romantic, rhythmic, playful, and full of surprises. Her ability to adapt her selection of music to the multiple elements that make up a particular milonga is an aspect of Bärbel’s individual style, which has become her unique signature.
Bärbel will be DJ'ing at the festival's galla milonga Saturday night on September the 3rd in Vanløse.
More information: Bärbel Rücker | Tanzbar.
