Andres Amarilla and Meredith Klein will teach the class at 8.30pm and perform at midnight!
DJ Lung-Kuei
Jennifer Wesnousky will host Tango Lounge this week while Tine is DJing at the festival in Albuquerque NM.
Jennifer will perform with Orlando to promote their upcoming show "Mientras Tango", one night only Nov 13.
There are simultaneous classes for beginners with Paul and for intermediate with Jennifer.
More about our stars
ANDRES AMARILLA
In 1986, Andres was a bored 10-year-old sitting around his house in Villa Crespo (a neighborhood of Buenos Aires), watching TV. Although tango had existed for nearly 100 years by that point, there was practically no tango being danced in the city of Buenos Aires at that moment. As luck or fate or chance would have it, a program came on TV featuring Juan Carlos Copes (the most famous tango stage dancer of all time) dancing tango. Transfixed and fascinated, Andres sat through the program and then promptly began a program of whining and cajoling to get his mom to find him tango lessons, of which there were practically none at the moment. A year later, when the local blacksmith began teaching tango classes in a neighborhood community center, Andres's mom enrolled him, and the rest is history.
Within a year, Andres was studying tango with Gustavo Naveira, who has since become tango's most famed pedagogue. And within three years, Andres was dancing on stage in the dance company of the very same Juan Carlos Copes whom he had seen on TV just a few years before.
In the 23 years since Andres began dancing tango, the dance has been transformed from a throw-back danced quietly by several couples of grandparents in outlying Buenos Aires neighborhoods to a worldwide phenomenon enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds in hundreds of cities. Andres has had a unique vantage point on this explosion. He remembers taking the 93 bus with a group of tango students for over an hour to get from the city center to the far-flung neighborhood of Villa Urquiza in order to seek out and learn from the few die-hard milongueros (milonga-goers) who had stopped dancing tango neither during the 1950s when everyone cool started dancing rock n' roll, nor during the 1970s when the military government effectively quashed all cultural life in the city of Buenos Aires. And while Andres is recognized today as one of the foremost dancers of contemporary tango, having taught & performed in over 40 cities on 5 continents, the roots of his dancing and teaching are firmly grounded with those abuelos in Villa Urquiza.
MEREDITH KLEIN
Although Meredith always wanted to dance, she grew up in a family where playing the piano was more important, and went to a school where playing field hockey was more important. As all parents hope, the piano ended up being a life-long source of joy and fulfillment, if also of neurosis and angst. Field hockey turns out unquestionably to have been a complete waste of time.
As a result of all of these distractions, Meredith didn't start dancing until adulthood. She began studying Argentine Tango in 1999, growing increasingly involved and obsessed to the point where in 2005 she sold everything she owned in order to move to Buenos Aires, where she promptly met Andres Amarilla, fell in love, bought an apartment that likely cost less than your car, and began dancing tango professionally.
In the past 5 years, Andres & Meredith have taught and performed in over 40 cities on 5 continents in countries including Australia, Turkey, Cyprus, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and the US. In 2008, Andres & Meredith moved to Philadelphia and established the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School, where they have already taught over 600 students.
Back in 2006, when Andres & I performed, along with a few other couples, in Gustavo Naveira's milonga in Buenos Aires, Gustavo spoke about the state of tango, saying "El tango se baile mejor dia por dia." ("Day by day, tango is being danced better.") Whether I'm in Buenos Aires at the milongas there, on tour in other cities, or here in Philadelphia, I see that happening, and that fact excites and motivates me. As a dancer, teacher and administrator of our tango school, I'm working in my small way to fulfill that statement.
LUNG-KUEI LIN
While quietly going about his business, Lung-Kuei has attracted both envy and affection throughout the tango community. The men want to dance like him, and the women like to dance with him. His immersion in the tango world has been a happy success.
Lung-Kuei started studying tango in 2005 and began deejaying in 2007. Gradually he built a solid reputation as a deejay and now he’s invited to spin tunes at the most popular and best milongas and practicas in New York and festivals around the country. His choices are not strange: he just plays one good song after another, placed in sequence with sensitivity.
Lung-Kuei has zero attitude about what he does well, and always keeps a sense of humor about things, while remaining a serious milonguero, 100% dedicated to the craft, the life, and the music of tango.
