2024-2025 Festival Instructors

We are working on returning to the Wyndham for the 2024-2025 NYE festival.

Murat started dancing tango in 1998. Since then he has lived mostly in the United States and Europe. He now lives in Lausanne, and has been working with Sigrid Van Tilbeurgh for the past 4 years. He travels to Hawaii every year, and makes sure to pass by the US West Coast.

Murat is very grateful to get to work with his long time partner, Michelle Lamb, as well as to reunite with his good old friends at US festivals. Michelle has had an eclectic career in dance for nearly 20 years, spanning many disciplines with a strong emphasis on healthy alignments and proper technique. Together their dance is unique and elegant yet playful and always musical.

Gustavo has 20 years of experience as a teacher and performer. He taught in prestigious Buenos Aires salons and for 15 years in international tours, mainly in the US and Europe. He is also a tango dance researcher, author of several books that have been translated into several languages and a documentary filmmaker. Luciana is an exquisite dancer who stands out for her elegance and musical perception. She learned from milonguero teachers, stage dancers and in-depth technique for women. She developed her career mainly in Europe, and she has also taught in various Buenos Aires tango schools. Together their teaching approach is didactic focused technique with the music and connection of the couple, which is revealed in their performances — full of improvisation, humor and creativity.

Liz and Yannick Vanhove started dancing Tango together when they were teenagers.

Since 2002 they have spent years learning and uncovering the best kept secrets this elegant dance has to offer; always driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and tradition.

Tall, elegant, harmonious and beautiful; they love everything about Tango and teach it with generosity, humility, patience and a touch of humor. They teach with great emphasis on the technique and the naturalness of the movement. Their dance expresses the great connection that unites them, in search of simplicity, elegance and musicality in every dance. Their Tango Salon performances are 100% improvised.

In 2012 they won the European championship in the category Tango Salon and became vice-champions of Tango Escenario. They were finalists at both the World Championship and the Metropolitan Championship in Buenos Aires for Tango Salon.

Their international career has since led them around many parts of the world. They have performed and taught in many schools and festivals in the US, China, Mexico, Argentina and Europe.

Maxi and Paloma focus on preserving the essence of traditional tango and its technique, while maintaining the connection during the improvisation. They inspire their students to develop a love for the embrace and the dance. They start their classes with the basics, discussing elemental topics. Then build on them, creating a better understanding of the structure of tango.

Maxi and Paloma have been dancing Argentine Tango for over 18 years. They made it to the finals of the World Tango Championship six times, winning 2nd place in 2007 in Buenos Aires. They won 1st place in South Korea in 2008, and 1st place in Chile in 2001 and 2006.

Daniela and Hernan learned tango from teachers with different traditions and a myriad of artistic disciplines. As a result of these incredible and diverse experiences, they have developed their own unique style, which expresses their joy, appreciation, and true love for the tango. They have been teaching and performing tango for more than 10 years, working as part of the exclusive staff of La Viruta in Buenos Aires. More recently, they have been teaching and performing in North America.

Carrie Field

Carrie Field fell in love with tango in 2005. After many trips to Buenos Aires, she began teaching tango with Mike Malixi in 2009. Her experience in Pilates, Yoga, and Gyrotonic, brings an organic and mechanical insight into the moving body that she applies to teaching tango. She has a B.A. in dance, a previous career as a modern dancer and is currently a graduate student in Occupational Therapy at the University of New Mexico. Carrie teaches in her local tango community of Albuquerque and is a regular guest instructor at tango festivals around the US.

Carrie is the creator of the Tango Inform™ series, a collection of exercises to prepare the body specifically for tango. She will be offering these classes free to festival participants.