Who is behind TangoBETTER and why?
Hello! Nice to meet you!
My name is Olga Metzner and I love tango, I love teaching, dancing, learning new things about tango, finding inspiration in it, meeting new people, performing and studying this magnificent dance down to the deepest detail. All my life I've been dancing (ballroom, hip-hop, folk, zouk etc.) and working with my body (professional tennis, pilates, yoga, HIIT, fitness), but once I discovered tango in Germany in 2009, I could no longer stop! Ever since I am only growing stronger in my passion for it, and I love sharing knowledge and inspiring people to dance!
My tango teaching is based on clear understanding of basic principles that make our bodies move with ease and feeling of freedom, and inspiring students to get curious and discover their own dance. My firm belief is that tango is about connecting to ourselves, our partners, music and finally community. I like to combine emotion and freedom of art and movement with the Russian approach to detail and perfection, therefore covering every aspect of what tango. Tango is EASY and ELEGANT, and in my teaching I focus on creativity through understanding of movement rather than fixed sequences.
I live in London where I run TangoBETTER events, teach tango, and do design work in my spare time. I used to work as an architect parallel to tango until I quit architecture permanently in July 2017 to work solely with my favourite dance. I travel a lot around Europe, Argentina and further to dance in marathons, festivals and normal milongas and work/study tango.
Photo credit: Serdar Kaplan
Why did I start the TangoBETTER project?
I have always been a very keen explorer, but for a while already I have been finding more and more inspiration in practicing, teaching and studying tango, not only dancing. I want to build a community of dedicated, elegant and capable dancers who are eager to go beyond the basic classes or social sides of tango. So TangoBETTER is a project that I essentially run to improve, deepen and discover tango for myself and like-minded souls, to inspire new generations of dancers, to share knowledge and show others the beauty of tango under guidance of myself and the best, most experienced and wonderful professional and hobby dancers.
TangoBETTER is a project dedicated to tango community building and improvement of tango dancers.
Who is part of the TangoBETTER team?
Maximilien Fagot
Max fell in love with the endless possibilities of tango while still living in Dublin and soon he felt the need to explore tango outside of Ireland and started attending tango festivals as well as taking workshops with world known maestros, and a lot of his knowledge comes from his intense tango trips to Buenos Aires. The people who got the biggest impact on him were Chicho Frumboli, Joshua Engel and Sayaka Higuchi, Horacio Godoy, Pablo Rodriguez and Luis Bianchi. He soon started teaching workshops in Dublin, trying to share with the local dancing community the knowledge he acquired while continuing travelling to tango marathons.
In June 2018 Max moved to London, where he met Olga Metzner and happily accepted to assist her during her classes. To the question “Why are you dancing tango?” Max usually answers: “For the embrace and the infinite possibilities of music interpretation that this dance offers”. Max focuses mainly on the social aspect of tango and the technique is aimed mostly at improving the feeling of the dance, more than how it would look.
Vicente Peruffo Minotto
Being an admirer of dancing and music from an early age, Vicente decided to venture on Latin dance styles (such as salsa, samba and forró) at the age of 19 in Brazil, where partner dancing is culturally very strong. He danced and performed for over 3 years, until he came in contact with tango for the first time at the age of 21. Falling in love with it right in his first class, he soon shifted all focus into the Argentine tango, and has been dancing and improving it actively since then.
After moving to London in 2015 he got to know and became active in the European and London tango community, where he met for the first time with Olga. They partnered for practicing and teaching together in 2017, sharing the same enthusiasm and ambitions in the dance. Vicente is a very warm, gentle and attentive teacher and one of the most creative dancers in the community.
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