Kate and Tony
Our Tango Story
Over more than 20 years of teaching, Kate and Tony have introduced hundreds of people to the world of Tango.
Where did their Tango journey begin?
Buenos Aires
Tony’s Tango journey began in the late 70s when for three years he lived in Buenos Aires and encountered the music every time he jumped into a taxi. What he couldn’t find – and he looked – was any dancing.
​
During the 70s Argentina’s Dirty War had closed all the dance-halls and the result was an entire lost generation of Tango dancers. It wasn’t until after the Falklands/Malvinas war that Tango re-emerged and began its global takeover.
Norwich
Years later in 2001 back in the UK, Tony had been commissioned to write a radio play about Argentina, when he walked into a pop-up Beginners Tango Workshop in Norwich hoping to find some material for the play.
What he found instead was a life-long obsession.
Someone else present at that same workshop was Kate - so it’s fair to say their dancing careers began at the same time on the same day. (7.30, 19th October…)
Tango in the Park
"With no regular dancing in Norwich we began to travel to Cambridge where the tango scene was growing. Determined to find some dancing nearer to home we joined forces with Paul Clelland and John Groves, and with the aid of some £13,000 in grant money set up Tango In the Park, based in the pavilion in Waterloo Park in Norwich."
"We brought in visiting teachers and started to run a practica. By virtue of being one step ahead of the complete beginners who were signing up, we found ourselves teaching almost at once. This is the group that morphed into first Norwich Tango and then today’s Tango Norfolk."
Tango Obsession
"As our tango obsession got more serious we began to travel in search of workshops, lessons and social dancing. Our travels included London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Seville, Nijmegen, Arnhem, Brussels, Zurich."
"Our teaching had begun to develop and we found ourselves running classes and workshops throughout Norfolk and Suffolk. We attended one of the first Teacher Training Courses run by Eric Jørissen at El Corte in Holland."
"It was during this period we began to focus in on the style of tango which attracted us most - a close embrace style that emphasised simplicity and musicality. Kate’s response to this kind of unshowy musical dancing is clear from her description of what it was like dancing with Ricardo Vidort: 'It felt like coming home'"
The teachers who had the greatest influence on this style were Eric Jørissen, Komala Voss and Stephan Wimmer at El Corte, Brigita Winkler in Berlin, and Luciana Valle from Argentina. And perhaps most important of all -
Ricardo Vidort
"Our encounter with Vidort had an unpromising start.​
Ricardo had been kidnapped on a visit to London by Muffy and Stephen Vince and brought to Bylaugh for the weekend. We received a late night phone call asking if we’d like to come out for a private lesson with an Argentine teacher. It was late, we were tired, but against our better judgment we climbed into the car and set off."
"It was 11.30 at night when we walked rather reluctantly onto the floor and met a beaming Ricardo. We were about to demonstrate some of the sequences we’d noted carefully in a variety of notebooks, confident we could impress this unknown milonguero. Before we’d taken a step Ricardo put out a hand and said - 'I don’t want to see anything you’ve ever danced before'"
"This simple statement brought us both - well, mainly Tony - to a complete standstill. By the time he’d recovered it had ushered in an entirely new approach to dancing tango.
The journey we have been on ever since can be traced directly to this moment."
Practica at The Garage
"In 2006 we started The Practica and began a long association with The Garage on Chapelfield North where we still teach. Until 2020 we did not include any formal teaching in the Practica. It was started on the assumption that we would support anyone who wanted to work on their dancing. It was a hands-on session where we provided individual input on whatever each dancer chose to focus on."
"In the post Covid era the landscape had changed and we began offering a short technique class alongside the Practica. This format has survived until today."
"Rather than seeing tango as a process of accumulating more steps we focus on going deeper into the key skills that make the shared experience of a tango possible. We call the course which embodies this 'Advanced Fundamentals'.