Dante Sanchez & Marcela Duran

 MARCELA DURAN

Marcela Duran-Known as “The Woman of the Tango” is an icon of the Tango scene around the world.

Marcela Duran, internationally acclaimed as a master teacher, also the iconic performer of the Broadway show Forever Tango. She has increased viewers’ interests in learning the tango through her presence and style, and is an influential mentor of many Argentine Tango teachers and social dancers worldwide. She and her partner, Carlos Gavito, developed an unique and dramatically close tango embrace in which both dancers leaned forward against each other.

Marcela’s first connection with the tango was through her father, a bandoneon player, in the tango orchestras in Rosario, Argentina, where she was born. She started to dance the tango in 1988 at Salon Canning, dancing with the great milongueros of that time and has absorbed and learned the essence of tango.

Following her dreams to spread the tango around the world, she came to San Francisco to perform with Forever Tango in 1994. She also performed at the Strand Theatre in London in 1995 where she partnered with the legendary milonguero Roberto “Alemán” Tonet. Subsequent to her engagement with the show in England, she danced for ten years with Carlos Gavito performing two classics of the show: “S.V.P” and “A EVARISTO CARRIEGO”. With Gavito, Marcela performed for the series, Evening At The Pops, with the Boston Pops Orchestra broadcast by PBS. She was part of the original cast members at the Broadway premier of Forever Tango at the Walter Kerr Theatre in June 1997 when the show was nominated for the Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards for Best Choreography. Marcela performed at the Spoleto Festival in Italy and toured through USA, Canada, Europe and Asia with the show. She has also performed at the Colon Theatre Opera House in Buenos Aires in 1999. She has performed and taught in 100 cities around United States, Canada, Italy, Portugal, England, Greece, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Shanghai, Mexico, Central and South America; immortalising her name as one of the Great Divas on the History of Tango.

DANTE SANCHEZ

Dante Sanchez is one of the most renowned and respected dancers, teachers and mentors of tango at an international level. So much so that he was a judge at the World Tango Championship (El Mundial de Tango) and the 2017 Metropolitan Championship in Buenos Aires.

Dante began studying tango at the age of 10, dancing in various tango and folklore festivals and competitions throughout Argentina.
He moved to Buenos Aires from Patagonia when he was 18 and studied with Carlos and Rosa Perez. He also began dancing with Ines Muzzopappa and less than a year later he participated in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Championship, finishing in second place. He was later crowned World Champion in the Tango Salon category at El Mundial de Tango in Buenos Aires, one of the most important tango festivals and championships in the world. He was only 18 years old.

In January 2016, at the age of 28, he opened his own tango school in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires called “Dante Sanchez Estudio”, where he teaches classes and organizes workshops with many renowned tango teachers. It is also one of the two most popular tango schools in Buenos Aires, where young people can interact with great milongueros and professionals.