PRESS RELEASE - For Immediate Release
Contacts:
Debbie Goodwin, Artistic Director
(415) 482-7588 or (415) 250-3593
DebbieAlma@AlmaDelTango.com
Media Contacts:
(415) 621-3186
Brechin Flournoy, x104
Lisa Okuhn, x112
neqacomm@quinn-assoc.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Social Dance Cultures and Tamalpais District Community Education co-present
Tango: A Romantic Ritual
Conceived and directed by Debbie Goodwin
Valentine’s Day weekend
February 14 @ 8pm and February 15 @ 2pm
Drake Little Theater, San Anselmo
Full calendar listing at the end of the release
Social Dance Cultures and Tamalpais District Community Education co-present
Tango: A Romantic Ritual
Conceived and directed by Debbie Goodwin
Valentine’s Day weekend
February 14 @ 8pm and February 15 @ 2pm
Drake Little Theater, San Anselmo
Full calendar listing at the end of the release
(January 26, 2009 – San Francisco, CA) Argentine Tango, that dynamic and evocative style of dance that brings couples together in perfect unison, is infused with an unspoken code of conduct. Tango’s silent language is layered with authentic customs and courtesies from Buenos Aires that add depth and surprises to this dramatic art form. Known for its smoldering mood, tango’s precise footwork and deep, emotional bends have captured the world’s imagination and given rise to a global subculture. Argentine Tango is found in every major city around the world. Enthusiasts from Montreal, the Bay Area, Zurich, Seattle, Amsterdam and Tokyo (to name a few) emulate not only the dance, but also the customs, dress, code of behavior and language of Buenos Aires’s tango culture.
Social Dance Cultures’ Debbie Goodwin - an accomplished tango dancer/choreographer, teacher and historian living in Marin - immersed herself in Argentine Tango culture for the past 13 years. “Tango: A Romantic Ritual” is rooted in her ethnological research of tango communities, the topic of her Master’s thesis in Dance from CSU Sacramento.
Under Goodwin’s direction, six dynamic couples will take the stage on Valentine’s Day weekend accompanied by Seth Asarnow (bandoneón), Marcelo Puig (guitar) and Terence Clarke (narrator). The featured dancers in “Tango: A Romantic Ritual” are:
- Debbie Goodwin and John Campbell
- Pier Voulkos and Daniel Peters
- Christy Coté and Darren Lees
- Chelsea Eng and Count Glover
- Carolina Rozensztroch and Humberto Décima
- Mariana Ancarola and David Orly-Thompson
These professional Bay Area-based dancers and musicians are tango connoisseurs who possess captivating individual styles. In “Tango: A Romantic Ritual” some will present choreographed work; others will improvise their piece. Each discrete love affair played out onstage will culminate into a lively evening of entertainment.
Goodwin remarks, “This is a tango performance conceived to take you beyond entertainment and to inspire you to dance. I, along with the dedicated cast, intend to share with our audience the enriching experience tango plays in forming community, heartfelt connections and artistic expression. Rather than a glitzy stage show, the first half of the performance gives the audience a glimpse of what real social style Argentine Tango is like. The audience will be able relate to the dance and think, ‘this is something I can do.’ The second half of the program features the six members of the all-female company Tango Con*Fusion with their male partners. Each couple portrays their own unique character and style. My hope is that our audience will be touched in a way that causes them to take the next step, and to learn the silent language of tango.”
“Tango: A Romantic Ritual” will be performed on Valentine’s Day weekend (Saturday, February 14 at 8pm, and Sunday, February 15 at 2pm) in San Anselmo at the Little Drake Theater. This program is sponsored by Social Dance Cultures and Tamalpais District Community Education and made possible, in part, by a grant from the Marin Arts Council Fund for Artists.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION: Social Dance Cultures is a non-profit 501(c3) organization dedicated to encouraging and supporting dance as a means of developing community. The organization currently chooses to focus on endeavors related specifically to Argentine Tango. Social Dance Cultures is the umbrella organization for several worthy organizations. The theater production "Tango, a Romantic Ritual" serves to educate and capture the imagination.
Social Dance Cultures’ Tango Con*Fusión Dance Company is an all-women dance company that bends the gender-related customs of this century-old dance. As collaborative artists they explore the idiom of Argentine Tango beyond its traditional boundaries. As professional performers and teachers of Argentine Tango, with varied backgrounds in contemporary and classical dance, they create a fusion of genres within their choreography. A couple’s dance morphs to a solo or collective interaction, leaders and followers exchange roles, and free movement is added.
In “Tango, A Romantic Ritual” the women of Tango Con*Fusión portray their skill and love of traditional Argentine Tango with their male partners.
Social Dance Culture’s educational outreach program – Alma Del Tango brings dance classes to the community primarily through the adult education programs of the Tamalpais School District in Marin County. TangoCalifia supports scholarships for dance education and free public social dances in San Francisco. Alma Video Productions engages in documenting dance productions that would otherwise disappear with the fading sounds of the last note of music. Further, the organization assists other artists in their dance-related film or video projects by providing equipment and technical assistance.
Media Contacts:
(415) 621-3186
Brechin Flournoy, x104
Lisa Okuhn, x112
neqacomm@quinn-assoc.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CALENDAR LISTING
High-res jpegs can be downloaded from top of this web page.
WHAT: Tango: A Romantic Ritual
Conceived and directed by Debbie Goodwin
Six dynamic couples perform the tango.
WHO: Social Dance Cultures
Performances by Debbie Goodwin & John Campbell;
Pier Voulkos & Daniel Peters;
Christy Coté & Darren Lees;
Chelsea Eng & Count Glover;
Carolina Rozensztroch & Humberto Décima; and
Mariana Ancarola & David Orly-Thompson.
WHEN: Saturday, February 14 @ 8:00pm
Sunday, February 15 @ 2:00pm
WHERE: Drake Little Theater
(1327 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, San Anselmo)
TICKETS: $25 advance; $30 at the door
BOX OFFICE: 800-838-3006 and socialdancecultures.org
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Letter from Artistic Director
Despite living in a world made much smaller by instant electronic communication and jet travel, humanity finds itself struggling with themes of separation and lack of purpose. We search for a remedy. For many, the value of building community through personal contact and artistic expression is being rediscovered through the experience of social dance. My particular interest is in Argentine Tango. Despite the designation “Argentine,” in almost every major city around the world, there is a community of non-Argentine tango dancers. Enthusiasts from Montreal, San Francisco, Zurich, Seattle, Amsterdam and Tokyo embrace the vision of tango culture from Buenos Aires and form communities of their own. They emulate not only the dance, but also the customs, dress, code of behavior and language of Buenos Aires.
My purpose in presenting “Tango, A Romantic Ritual” is to tantalize the curious, those who are seeking a community of people who value human connection, artistic expression through dance, and/or relationship. My hope is that some will be touched in a way that causes them to take the next step, to learn the silent language of tango.
“Dance should be studied because it is important to the people involved,” in the opinion of Joann W. Keali’inohomoku, anthropologist and pioneering dance researcher. I am convinced that this is true based on my 13 years’ experience as a member of the San Francisco Bay Area tango community. Much of the material used in this presentation was developed during Masters Degree thesis research for my Degree in Dance Education. I find the members of these communities are often obsessed with the tango. They represent a subculture that shares a common passion for this dance.
Dance cannot be heard, held onto and often not even repeated. To research and study dance because it is important to the participants validates this human expression. This is an important concept for me personally. I have always felt the need to dance. To me, it feels as necessary as breathing does. I want to share this with others, to encourage the growth and health of the social dance culture most beloved to me personally.
The dancers in the cast are professional tango teachers from the San Francisco Bay Area, and the narrator, Terry Clark, is a scholar and writer well studied in the literature relating to Argentine Tango. Our musicians Seth Asarnow on bandoneón and Marcelo Puig on guitar focus their creative energies solely on Argentine Tango. Tango has touched each of their hearts and transformed their lives. Through “Tango: A Romantic Ritual” I, along with the dedicated cast, intend to share with our audience the enriching experience tango plays in forming community, heartfelt connections and artistic expression. This is a tango performance conceived to take you beyond entertainment, to in fact inspire you to dance.
Debbie Goodwin
Artistic Director
Tango: A Romantic Ritual
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“TANGO: A ROMANTIC RITUAL”
About The Artists
DEBBIE GOODWIN and JOHN CAMPBELL
Debbie Goodwin, Artistic Director of Social Dance Cultures
A lifelong dancer with early training in jazz, tap and musical theater, Debbie earned her Bachelors Degree in Dance from California State University, Sacramento in 1998 and her Masters in Dance Education in 2001. Her Masters Thesis Project, the production, “Tango! A Story of Sacramento’s Argentine Tango Community” played to sold-out houses in October 2001. Debbie produced and directed Sacramento’s "Los Tangueros Dance Company" in the successful show “Tango! Rhythms of the Heart” in October 2002. Before establishing Social Dance Cultures in 2000, a non-profit supporting development of community through dance, Debbie developed the highly successful “Rugcutter” dance program in Auburn, California. Focused on adolescents, her classes in Lindy Hop, performance skills, jazz technique and choreography for vocal performers were extremely popular.
Debbie's first classes in Argentine Tango were with Nora Dinzelbaucher in 1995. She has studied intensively with Nito y Elba, Orlando Paiva, Osvaldo Zotto & Lorena Ermocida, Luciana Valle, Miriam Larici & Hugo Patyn, Fabian Salas & Carolina de Rivera, Diego di Falco & Carolina Zocalski, Fernanda Ghi & Guillermo Merlo, Gustavo Navierra, Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes. She has studied both in the United States and in Buenos Aires, Argentina with these special teachers, sampling as well a rich variety of other masters. Debbie, along with her partner John Campbell developed “Alma Del Tango”, a program dedicated to the art of Argentine Tango from 1996 to 2003. They offered group and private instruction, lecture-demonstrations, workshops and performances. In 2003, Debbie relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, living in San Anselmo. She is one of the founding members of Tango Con*Fusion Dance Company where she currently devotes her artistic attention as a choreographer and featured dancer.
John Campbell
John was summoned to Argentine Tango in the course of his mid-life awakening. When El Alma del Tango beckons, there is nothing to do but to follow the call. John's first classes were with George Guim. He has studied intensively with Nito y Elba, Orlando Paiva, and Osvaldo Zotto y Lorena Ermocida, Luciana Valle, Miriam Larici y Hugo Patyn, Fabian Salas y Carolina de Rivera, Fernanda Ghi y Guillermo Merlo, Gustavo Navierra. He has studied both in the United States and in Buenos Aires, Argentina with these and other special teachers. John danced several theater productions, including Tango!, Tango! Rhythms of the Heart, and Tango: a Romantic Ritual. He provided substantial production support for these shows, as well as editing and producing feature-length videos of each. John and Debbie have worked together since 1996 developing their own style and teaching methods. Currently, their dances focus on improvisation and refining musicality, lead and follow. John is an eye surgeon, and managing partner of MarinEyes in San Rafael, California.
PIER VOULKOS and DANIEL PETERS
Pier Voulkos and Daniel Peters are former professional modern dancers who discovered Argentine Tango twelve years ago. They have performed Argentine Tango throughout California as soloists and in collaborative Tango performance groups. Daniel & Pier currently teach Argentine Tango in San Francisco at the Cheryl Burke Dance Center and the Cellspace Alternative Milonga. In Berkeley they teach the Argentine Tango Foundation and Progressive classes at The Beat on Thursday nights.
Pier Voulkos started her dance career in San Francisco with Ed Mock and retired from the Mark Morris Dance group in 1989. Through the 1980’s in New York she also worked with choreographers Daniel Peters, Diane Martel, Donald Byrd, and Rosalind Newman. As a theatrical designer in 1986 she received two separate collaborative commissions for theatrical set and costume design, one funded through the Visual Art Program, New York and the other funded through the New Works Program, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Since discovering Argentine Tango in 1997 she has become totally immersed in its rich social culture, its history, its music and its improvisation and creative possibilities. She is a founding member, dancer, and choreographer with Tango Con*Fusión, an all woman tango company.
CHRISTY COTÉ and DARREN LEES
Christy Coté is one of the founding members Tango Con*Fusión and has been dancing, choreographing and teaching professionally for more than 25 years, devoting the past 11 years to her love of Argentine Tango. Christy is one of San Francisco's most respected dancers and teachers, and has been featured locally on KVTU's Segment 2 Report with Bob MacKenzie, KPIX/Channel 5 Evening Magazine and nationally in Dance Spirit Magazine.
Christy is the creator and director of the Argentine Tango program at San Francisco's popular Cheryl Burke Dance Center where she oversees and teaches a full schedule of classes, practicas and Milongas. Christy's teaching method has been published in the first-ever Argentine Tango Manual by Dance Vision and is complimented by a series of 20 instructional DVDs by Christy with her partner George Garcia of Honolulu. Christy and her partner Darren Lees of San Diego perform regularly with MonTango, Tango No. 9 and produce monthly Tango shows at San Francisco's Peña Pacha Mama restaurant. They also choreograph for and perform with their professional performance group the LiberTango Dancers who were selected from over 150 auditioning groups to perform in the 2006 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. You can catch Christy & Darren teaching in many cities around the country, at tango festivals such as the Maui TangoFest and on the annual Tango at Sea Cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line. For more information go to www.christycote.com.
Darren Lees lives in San Diego and has been dancing Argentine tango for 6 years. The past 4 years he and Christy have enjoyed traveling together, teaching and performing at various tango communities around the country and at festivals such as Reno´s Tango Brujo, TangoFest Maui and on the Tango at Sea Cruise.
CHELSEA ENG and COUNT GLOVER
Chelsea Eng A lifelong dancer and since 1994 a devotee of Argentine tango, Eng is a full-time professional performer, choreographer and teacher. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education – Dance Specialization from Stanford University. As head of the popular Argentine Tango Program at City College of San Francisco, she regularly teaches semester-length credit courses in Argentine Tango through PE & Dance. Chelsea’s guest teaching engagements have spanned Portland (7 TangoFests), Las Vegas, Seattle, Philadelphia, Honolulu, San Diego and Los Angeles, as well as a Carnival Cruise to Mexico. Performance highlights include national television (Latin Eyes), the International Dance Festival/New York City, Diálogos on Hollywood’s theatre row, Leading Ladies of Tango at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and countless gigs with the musicians of MonTango, Tango No. 9 and Trio Garufa. Chelsea is a founding member of the all-female company Tango Con*Fusión and co-leads an annual trip to the CITA in Buenos Aires.
Count Glover is a professional dancer, teacher and choreographer of Argentine Tango. He has studied with some of the worlds most renowned tango maestros. He is a well rounded, versatile dancer and performer, with a Tap and Ballet background that began at the age of two with his grandmother dance company in Chicago.
Count has performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Michigan, Chicago, New York, and Miami. In 2000, he won first place in the West Coast Tango competition organized by the Argentine government and in 2002 was a finalist in the world Tango competition held in Miami. He was a featured artist at the restaurant Destinos in San Francisco and also a principal dancer for the MonTango Orchestra base in the Bay area since 2000. Count has also been featured on the KRON Channel 4 program “Latin Eyes” and various documentaries about tango.
CAROLINA ROZENSZTROCH and HUMBERTO DÉCIMA
Carolina Rozensztroch began her career as a modern dancer and has been a professional dancer and teacher for fifteen years. In her country, Argentina, Carolina devoted herself to study Tango with the great masters. She absorbed the essence of Tango by dancing at the many Milongas in Buenos Aires. Before moving to San Francisco in 2006, Carolina lived in New York City for eight years. In addition to performing and dancing in NYC, she implemented the Argentine Tango Classes at Fashion Institute of Technology’s Recreation Department (State University of New York). Carolina also created a successful Tango school at the Aurora Studios where she taught students from around the world.
Following Carolina’s move to San Francisco, she has developed a comprehensive Argentine Tango class series at both Barrio Tango Studio and Slovenian Hall, and has been a special guest teacher at The Metronome Dance Center, as well as other tango venues throughout the Bay Area. She performed in the Leading Ladies of Tango production at the Herbst Theater, December 2006 and is now a member of the company Tango Con* Fusion. Carolina teaches, performs, and hosts a weekly Milonga La Cumparsita. Tango Tour² to Buenos Aires. www.tangowithcarolina.com
Humberto Décima is presently on a teaching tour in the United States, and will come to the Bay Area especially for this show.
DAVID ORLY-THOMPSON and MARIANA ANCAROLA
David Orly-Thompson discovered Argentine Tango in 1993 in San Francisco where he started learning with dancers from the cast of Forever Tango.
Mariana Ancarola, raised in Spain by her Argentine parents and family, grew up listening to Tango music from infancy. As an adolescent she was studying ballet and modern dance when she began in 1996 to dance Argentine Tango. Meanwhile, David moved to Buenos Aires in 2000 to immerse himself in the culture of Buenos Aires. It was there that he met Mariana, who was visiting relatives. They began intensively practicing and studying tango as a couple. They focused their training with Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Ann, as well as Mariano (Chicho) Frumboli. On returning together to Mariana's home in Spain, they began their teaching career. Four years later, in 2006, they relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, they continue a very busy teaching schedule while still making time to host several popular milongas.
MUSICIANS
Seth Asarnow (bandoneón) is a native of the Bay Area. His playing is heard on recordings that range in style from traditional tangos to rock, and he works regularly with some of the finest tango dancers in the world. He is the bandoneónist and musical director of "Nora's Tango Week" and the "Los Angeles Tango Festival," and has been a featured soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, and the Santa Cruz, San Jose and Santa Rosa Chamber Orchestras. He continues to promote the tango locally, teaching bandoneón and playing both public and private engagements.
Marcelo Puig (guitar) was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began studying classical guitar at age 11. He has performed and recorded with rock bands, accompanied vocalists, and numerous international artists. He draws his guitar style from a wide range of popular musical influences such as Latin American folklore, Brazilian, Rock, Jazz, and Tango. He has been an instructor of music for over 30 years and currently enjoys teaching guitar in a variety of styles.
TERENCE CLARKE (narrator)
Novelist, screenwriter and journalist Terence Clarke has written three novels published in hard- and soft-cover by Mercury House and Ballantine Books. A new novel by Terry, The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro, will be published in 2009. His book of short stories, Little Bridget and The Flames of Hell was recently published on Amazon.com. His translation to English of Pablo Neruda’s Cien sonetos de amor (One Hundred Sonnets of Love) was recently published in digital form by Red Room. Terry is also the author of two feature-length narrative screenplays now in development. An accomplished dancer of tango, Terry wrote and was a co-producer and principal cast member of Literary Tangos, a stage/music/dance production about tango, as written of by the great South American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It played to standing-room-only audiences at the Koret Theater in San Francisco. Terry also co-wrote and was the on-stage commentator of Tango: A Romantic Ritual, a stage presentation produced by John Campbell and Debbie Goodwin, and directed by Debbie Goodwin. It is available on video. Terry also wrote, co-produced, co-directed and appeared in a recent half-hour documentary special on Argentine tango for LatinEyes, a nationally syndicated television show based at KRON TV in San Francisco. Terry’s website is at Red Room.com, where his journalism on the arts can also be found. |
