Philadelphia Argentine Tango School

Olga Besio

Bio

Olga Besio is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of tango dance companies. Her career has spanned 35 years of working professionally in tango, and an entire lifetime of dancing tango.

A short list of the countless ways in which Olga’s contributions have been recognized:

Named an Honorary Member of the National Academy of Tango (Academia Nacional des Tango)
Received the “Ambassador of Tango” award from UNESCO
Recognized as an extraordinary dance teacher by the Argentine Council on Dance (Consejo Argentino de la Danza)
Received an award from the Buenos Aires municipal government

Olga created the first massive and free tango course in the city of Buenos Aires, associated with the General San Martin Cultural Center. By initiating large numbers of porteños to the dance of their city (tango), she played a huge role in the return of tango social dancing. She has specialized in, and been the first to create, seminars on musicality, adornments, technique, composition, improvisation, and tango pedagogy.

But her greatest desire is to transmit a profound and true understanding of tango, our dance, straight from the heart.

Technique & Musicality for Individuals: Multiple Dialogues in Tango Dance

This series explores the translation of sound into tango movement in all its aspects, including adornments.

Sunday, September 13: The Essence of Tango and its Music inside Our Bodies

Dialogues within one’s body, and with the floor and the music. Initiation of movement.
Weight, axis and the use of the joints
Seeking a natural manner to put music inside the body
The birth of musicality
The translation of sound into movement
Accents, phrasing, pauses, closures, intensities

Sunday, September 20: The Music, the Limitations that it Imposes, and Control of One’s Body

El compás (the tango rhythm or bar in musical notation). 4x4, 3x4, 2x4
The coordination of sound and movement
The step in terms of musical timing and physical control
Technique for ochos, pivots and sacadas
The motors of movement
Moving through space and moments of arrival

Sunday, September 27: Adornments

What is an adornment?
Adornment as part of the essential language of tango, as much for the individual as for the couple
The musicality of each step
The step as an artistic act
The relation with the floor. Carressing the floor and “sacando viruta” (scraping the finish off the floor). Strong and soft. Staccato, legato, hybrid. Changes of speed in the transfer of weight.
How the adornment can manifest the essence of tango: for the leader and for the follower.
Enrichment of the dance, and its limits.

October 21: Tango in the 1980s - Tracing the Resurgence of Tango

Presented by Olga Besio

For people who love tango, it’s quite shocking to learn the extent to which the dance form nearly disappeared. After falling out of favor in the late 1950s, the tango social dance community shrank for decades, until the military dictatorship (1976-1983) nearly quashed it completely. One of the first things Andres Amarilla told me when we met was that, by the time he started dancing in 1987, there were probably only 100 people actively dancing tango in Buenos Aires. One of them, and one who may have contributed more than anyone else to tango’s return, is Olga Besio.

Teacher, dancer, choreographer and dance company director, Olga Besio was part of a small group of young people at the University of Buenos Aires in the early 1980s studying Argentine folkloric dances. Olga brought to the group the idea of adding tango to their repertoire, and initially, no one else liked the idea. However, Olga kept advocating for tango, and slowly a few more members of the group took it up. From that moment until today, Olga has never stopped working on the project to bring tango back. She initiated huge numbers of porteños to tango by organizing a free course at the San Martin Cultural Center, has been named an Honorary Member by the National Academy of Tango, and was distinguished with an “Ambassador of Tango” award by UNESCO. In short, without Olga’s efforts, the global tango community would likely not be what it is today. All of us who dance tango around the world owe her a great debt.

Please join us on Wednesday, October 21 to hear about the resurgence of tango from Olga’s perspective. Given that tango will need another resurgence after the “tango pause” caused by Covid, this story is particularly timely and important.

The lecture will be presented in Spanish, with English translation by Meredith Klein.