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TANGO SIN ZAPATOS is proposed as a space for teaching and practicing tango, using tools of improvisation, contemporary dance and theater to expand the horizons of the genre.

Tango is a collective and social dance, this means that it is a genre that is born from the town, from the people. This entails the complex articulation between people from different places and social classes. Tango was born in the River Plate region (Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay) as a mix between the cultures of Afro-descendants, gauchos, Creoles and European immigrants from the migratory wave of the late 19th century. This mixed genesis implies a horizontality in the construction, and means that tango, in addition to having built - and continue building - specific codes and modes, carries with it the "seed" of the mixture, of intercultural articulation.

This project is born from the questions that arise when teaching and sharing tango in other parts of the world: What relationship can a foreigner have with tango? How can we retell a culture born elsewhere? Is this possible? What are the common points?

"Tango without shoes" is a proposal that aims to open the horizons of tango, without ignoring its roots. Nothing that claims to be continued can forget its starting point. Gustavo Varela, the renowned Argentine tango writer says: "it is about recognizing the origin of tango, the land in which it grows and the political wind that moves it, that displaces it and that makes it be another each time, being the same ". Without trying to escape from the present and its inevitable mixtures with other genres and disciplines, "Tango without shoes" does not try to take refuge in tradition as something obsolete.

The study of the roots of the genre is essential to know the starting point where the mixture begins (which already occurs naturally). So, is it possible, on the path of learning the elements that make tango what it is (its codes, its music, its lyrics and its way of dancing) to leave the doors open to articulation with other languages?

Once tango has left its cradle and migrated to other countries in America, Europe and Asia, focusing on the encounter with what tango can take from those cultures to evolve or change is the only thing that can make the tango continues to be a collective and social genre.

In other lands, the articulation of tango with other disciplines and cultures is once again inevitable. What can happen in the encounter between tango and traditional European folklore? What happens in the encounter between tango and fado? What can happen in the encounter between kizomba and tango? etc etc.

Based on the foundations that build this project, its activities are to share workshops and tango classes led by Janice Iandritsky, as well as organize milongas, cycles and practices, coordinated by Janice in collaboration with other dancers and musicians.

"Tango sin Zapatos" works with the idea of the simultaneity of relationships that exist in tango: the collective (the others), the couple (the other), the music and the body itself. These axes are always worked on in regular classes and workshops.

La Pina Submarina, Valencia, 03/2023

InTango, HangZhou (CHN), 2023

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